After suffering numerous beatings, the brothers took up boxing and martial arts. The single-minded John became an expert, while the impressionable Justin was dissuaded by those who deemed them dangerous – or, as John sees it: “He was always getting something and dropping it.”
But his footballing excellence was unignorable. “That was the easiest way for us to make money, which we made an awful lot of,”
Jarell Martin Womens Jersey says John. “There were no black bankers, lawyers, or anything at all. We knew the only way to make money if you were black was either to sing, dance or play football – that’s it.”
Justin soon carved a niche at Norwich, before signing for Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in 1981. During that time, he developed a taste for big spending and fast living, also making regular appearances in Nottingham’s gay bars.
http://www.authenticgrizzliestore.com/Lorenzen_Wright_Jersey Before long, Clough excommunicated him, even calling the police to the training ground on one occasion. Beset by injury, Justin’s career tailed off, while his personal life grew increasingly chaotic and his behaviour increasingly erratic.
John left Norwich in 1983 to escape his more talented brother’s shadow; he was also angry that Justin hadn’t used his influence to help him at the club or elsewhere. The man he saw as “my mother and father”, “my shining light” and “my life” became “my arch enemy”, and their relationship never recovered.
In 1986, John joined Wimbledon, and was a key figure as the Crazy Gang established themselves in the top division before winning the FA Cup in 1988. In 1989, he was picked for England, and in 1990 at the Professional Footballers’ Association dinner, he was accosted in the toilet.
“One of the most famous players, playing for Nottingham Forest, just said to me: ‘Hey, your brother’s gay.’ I’d heard little things,
Danny Green Youth Jersey but when he said that, the first thing I was gonna do, I was gonna beat the hell out of him. I was with Vinnie Jones, and it was Vinnie who held me back … I was gonna give him a good slap because I thought he was insulting my brother.”
John, “a red-blooded African man”, did not believe it – until Justin confided in him. Both their mothers were ill, and assuming that Justin was simply after money and attention, John responded angrily. “Right now, we don’t need that,” he said. “I will give you £100,000 if you just keep your mouth shut.”
John was also concerned for himself: “I was worried that people would think it was me. John Fashanu, Justin Fashanu, J and J … I was the hard man, we were hard men, Vinnie Jones, John Fashanu, Dennis Wise, we were the hard team with a macho, strong image, we had a massive following of people who loved the way we played, and suddenly my brother’s coming out and saying this?”
So to “empower” his brother, John wrote a cheque and had his agent take Justin to a hotel, only to discover that “my agent was a gay sympathiser”. In the event, Justin kept John’s money and sold the story to the Sun anyway.
Justin also revealed that he had slept with a married Conservative MP and that they had kissed in the House of Commons.
http://www.authenticspurstore.com/David_Lee_Jersey He later retracted the claims – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – but John now believes that the liaison never happened.
Nor does he accept the evidence offered by a teammate at Leyton Orient that Justin would arrive at training with “rent boys”, and says that an allegation of raping a minor in the US is untrue; on the other hand, after questioning and blood testing, a warrant was issued for Justin’s arrest on charges of first- and second-degree assault and second-degree sexual assault. But he had already left for England.
The last time the brothers spoke, Justin feared for his liberty, but John, despite now accepting homosexuality as “a normal thing”, was “too annoyed to understand what he was really saying” and did not believe that Justin deserved his unconditional loyalty. “There comes a time when it’s enough help,” he says. “Enough is enough. He was my older brother, not my younger brother. Why am I continually giving him money?” Three days later, John was baptising his son Amir when the police arrived, media in tow, to tell him that his brother had killed himself and asking him to identify the body.
