Like ‘Oumuamua, Fashanu was gone from each new place just as quickly as he had arrived there: in his nineteen years as a footballer, he played for twenty-two clubs, an existence not so much nomadic as frantic. Like ‘Oumuamua, he bewitched every expert who observed him, soaring into the uppermost reaches of the English game with a spectacular strike against one of the finest teams in Europe. Yet Fashanu was painfully and utterly subject to the laws of footballing gravity. Instead of accelerating into the distance, untouched and undefeated, he found himself torn to the ground by overwhelming forces. It is grim to think that the name of the first Black footballer to command a transfer fee of £1 million, a sum paid in 1981 by Nottingham Forest to take him from Norwich City, is mostly remembered as a cautionary tale – a warning that sport is no place for gay male players.
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