My friend Ralph Inniss, who has died aged 71, was one of the first black football coaches in Manchester.
Ralph worked first as a coach on a voluntary basis with local amateur clubs until, in the late 1970s, he began in a paid capacity with Manchester City at their Platt Lane training complex, where I met him while I was playing football in 1988. When Manchester Metropolitan University took over Platt Lane in 2014, Ralph stayed on as a coach.
