DISAPPEARING ACT

A new who wdocumentary tells the previously unknown story of a player as a 1970s First Division star – and then simply vanished

By GAVIN

D I S A P P E A R I NA C T

By GAVIN

WILLACY Illustration

There was nothing unusual about a 1970s footballer retiring at the age of 36 and disappearing, remaining undiscovered until they got a MySpace or Facebook account. But few had the profile of Tony Powell, Norwich City’s Player of the Year in 1979, a regular in Shoot magazine and Panini albums, in team groups next to Martin Peters less than a decade after he lifted the World Cup. And none had the second or third acts of his dramatic life.

Powell was The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel, a new feature-length documentary. Young filmmakers Nick Freeman and Ramiel Petros would often walk by an old man sitting on a balcony of the closed-down hotel in West Hollywood and decided he’d be an interesting subject for a short film. When they found out his backstory, that he was a gay former professional footballer, the project ballooned.

There can be no darker example of playing in the shadows than gay men in professional team sport. Of the 4,000 or so men playing professional football, rugby league, union and cricket in the UK, not a single one has publicly announced they’re gay or bisexual. Each sport has had just one or two who have this century. The producer of Last Guest , the former Leeds midfielder Robbie Rogers, thought he had to stop playing after coming out in 2013 only to reappraise that decision once back in his native Southern California.

“He’d been telling himself that the pain of rejection would be too great. Although there are clear negatives in coming out in a major sport, your alternative is not something that anyone would want”

“Will my life be hard if I tell my secret at 19?” asks Petros. “Yes – but the lesson of Tony’s story is of the price you pay if you keep the truth bottled up and have to hide. It affects every choice for the rest of your life.” In millions of cases across the UK, there is enough evidence to tell young gay people that everything will probably be all right. Sadly that’s just not the case in male professional team sport. By extraordinary coincidence, Powell was a team-mate of a young Justin Fashanu at Norwich, whose life after coming out was even more tragic. “It’s important for a closeted player to see what might happen if you hold onto that secret like Tony did,” says co-director Freeman. “He’d been telling himself that the pain of rejection would be too great. Although there are clear negatives in coming out in a major sport, your alternative is not something that anyone would want.” As with all art, something had to be left out and sadly for NASL nostalgists that was the three years Powell spent at San Jose Earthquakes – playing with George Best and another former Manchester United winger, Gordon Hill – and one season in Seattle with a coterie of well-known English players including Joe Corrigan, Steve Daley and Alan Hudson. As viewers left a screening in Finsbury Park in early September, an audience member in an Arsenal T-shirt jovially chastised Freeman for showing Powell scoring against the Gunners. “Sorry, but we could only find him scoring a couple of goals so had to include that,” said Freeman. There’s little of Powell’s six years at Bournemouth either, a lower division grounding that prepared him to become an enforcer in the top flight for the Canaries, putting it about against fellow Second Division promotion chasers Aston Villa in the League Cup final in 1975 when John Bond empowered Powell’s left foot down the wing rather than at the back. Villa won the game and both clubs were promoted two months later.

When the Sounders went broke, Powell retired and moved to LA, losing touch with everyone in the UK. When his partner of a decade, David, died with AIDS, no one seems to know much about what Petros calls the next “very bad decade” for Powell. Around 20 years are missing in the film, mainly because Powell wouldn’t talk about them. A man who’d played 500 senior games in England simply vanished.

The Anglia TV reels of 1970s action – inept stumbling on mud plains interspersed with outrageous skill – were the easiest sequences to watch in an extraordinary film. It is painful to see a man so respected and successful become a functioning alcoholic who can’t remember the names of his own children.

Powell’s life and the film pivot on a desperately dramatic week after he’s vacated the motel, ending a 20-year residence. His closest love dies the day after Powell himself has a close brush with mortality. He is left devastated, as his emotional and physical losses pile up. It would be enough to break most folk. “There’s so much pain and suffering but it’s a hopeful film,” claims Petros. “Things started to change for him, which was refreshing for us. It was pretty bleak until a burst of light appeared.”

Doubt had begun to drown former team-mates’ descriptions of Powell as dependable and reliable. But they also called him loyal. Powell realises he has nothing left to lose. It was a case of now or never when he reaches out to his sisters. There’s enough unused material for a sequel but Freeman and Petros knew where to draw the line and let the curtain fall. “For 25 years, his life was the same and in the space of a year, ten things happened that drastically changed it,” said Petros. “We happened to be there at the right time. We were able to ask him questions that got him thinking about the past, and helped him find people.”

“We’re no therapists,” said Freeman, “but this form gave us the opportunity to ask questions other people won’t ask. We weren’t reporters from England trying to solve the Tony Powell Mystery. We’re just curious, because that’s what’s required. One question leads to another and a world opens up. It can have a positive impact.” Powell is now in an assisted living block just ten minutes from his daughter Danielle in San Diego. That they lived so close to each other for years without knowing “adds an extra layer of heartbreak”, says Freeman.

The film ends with more shafts of light, but none of them are thanks to anything the football industry has done, other than Norwich City welcoming Powell back one matchday to a Carrow Road unrecognisable from his time there. The creators are desperate for their film to be more widely seen by football fans, although none will be proud of how their sport comes across. So much has changed in so many societies yet little has moved on in the ice age of men’s football. While rugby league has openly gay referees, club owners and members of the media, the women’s game is the only place in British professional football you will find openly gay players, coaches and pundits.

“Masculinity is such a big thing in sports that it’s hard to get across that masculinity and sexuality are two separate things,” says Petros. “Being both tough and gay seems a surprise to some people. Women’s football is completely different, especially if they don’t have millions of eyes on them.”

Freeman hopes the film will be a subtle education: “We’re not trying to preach. Rather it’s about looking at this individual, who you will fall in love with, a tough player who you would have been a fan of.” Follow @thelastguestdoc on Instagram for updates on screenings and streaming release