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“You should cut your dreadlocks if you want to further your career.”
I was first told that, or words to that effect, in 2013 while working as a sports journalist for another media company. At the time I was very proud of my hair and considered it part of my identity. I was also of the opinion that having dreadlocks should not – and did not – impact my ability to do my job.
So I refused.
For a time it didn’t make a difference but, come 2015, I thought I had every chance to cover the Rugby World Cup because of my interest in the sport and being one of our lead reporters at the time. But the opportunity went elsewhere because “my look” wasn’t considered appropriate for such a blue ribbon event, and I needed to lose the dreadlocks.
I was devastated. Looking back, it was a deeply racist experience but I was too caught up in missing out on covering one of the world’s great sporting events to process exactly what had been said to me.
A few weeks later, I cut off the dreadlocks that I’d been growing for 12 years and shaved my head. At the time, I felt like I’d lost a part of who I was.
Memories of that came flooding back when I read about former Premier League striker Gifton Noel-Williams and his struggles to get into management. The lack of opportunities afforded to him prompted people close to him to suggest that he cut off his dreadlocks in order to improve his job chances.
“I love my hair and I just feel that if I had to cut it, it would be a very sad day,” Noel-Williams said.
“I’ve said to people before, if this means that I never become a manager because of my hair then that’s OK. I’m OK with that. I’m really, really OK with that.”
Noel-Williams, now 43, spent the majority of his playing career at Watford, Stoke and Burnley, helping the former to reach the Premier League in 1999. Now he is seeking to return to England’s top flight as a manager.
Statistically, the odds are against him. A report commissioned by the Black Footballers Partnership in March found that just 4.4% of manager-related roles in England were held by black employees – despite black players making up 43% of Premier League squads and 34% of Football League squads.
No matter how difficult the challenge Noel-Williams faces, he isn’t willing to compromise who he is.
“The answer’s really simple: my hair means a lot to me and it’s a massive part of me and who I stand for,” he said.
“It has so many meanings to me. My uncle passed away about 15 years ago and he was a real Rasta. He was a real roots man. He was a real positive, good vibes, never negative.
“When he was going through cancer, part of his hair fell out. That’s when I started growing my hair. I was doing it for uncle Tony.
“It’s not about vanity, it’s for my uncle and respect for him.”
The hair is staying – and so is his gold tooth despite the negative stereotypes.
“You’ve got to look beyond the gold tooth. The gold tooth is just part of my image. It doesn’t define me,” he said.
“Just because I’ve got a gold tooth doesn’t mean that I sell drugs. You know, my dad was a bishop, my mom’s a reverend, so if I wasn’t a footballer I would have probably been a pastor in church and I probably would have still had a gold tooth because Ian Wright was my hero.
“I’m not getting rid of my gold tooth and my hair is the same.”
Despite a lengthy playing career and holding all the required qualifications including his Uefa Pro Licence, managerial offers have been virtually non-existent.
Following a stint in India with I-League club Real Kashmir, the former forward is the current technical director for the Grenada Football Association, working alongside head coach and former Leeds United striker Terry Connor.
He also appeared in the BBC Three docu-series Boot Dreams, in which he trained a squad of young footballers let go by academies.
“I want to be a manager in the Premier League. That’s what I want to get to at some point in my life, but I’ve come to realise that I’m gonna have to go about it the hard way,” he said.
“I kind of applied for a couple of jobs but didn’t really get no reply from them. The way I kind of look at it is, things are meant to happen for a reason.
“I’m willing to go to India to go and get some experience. I’m going to Grenada to go get some experience so no one can ever say – and I’ve heard it before – that ‘black coaches are lazy. They don’t want to get on the courses. They don’t want to travel’.
“I’m trying to make sure that I do those things so that you can never say that I’m lazy. You can never say that I don’t want to be educated. You can never say that I don’t want to go out of my comfort zone to get experience.”
Speaking with Noel-Williams at the Vicarage Road he once graced, he added: “I’m very frustrated but what I’ve realised in life is there’s two ways to deal with frustration.
“You can either let frustration take over and then you start worrying about the things that are out of your control, or you just take all the frustration and do everything you can in your power to control what you can control.
“I want to get to a point where someone’s looking and thinking, ‘How could we not hire this guy?’
“I have so many different aspects to my game now that I feel that my time will come.”
Despite his own frustrating experiences of trying to break into the game as a manager, Noel-Williams is optimistic for future generations.
“Look at my kids, their friends. The people they hang around with are multi-national. So all these people are not seeing colour as much as it was in my generation,” he added.
“I believe things will change and people will realise that there’s more to a black man than just his body. They forget that there’s a brain here as well.
“But up to that time, the way I look at it is, if I don’t get through, I’m going to kick down some doors and I’m going to make sure those doors are really damaged so that the younger generation can walk through it without no hassle.
“I want to be one of the pioneers on the forefront with this kind of stuff.”
By Daniel Ogunshakin
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