Everton History

Everton's Greatest Games – Dixie's 60

a chapter from Jim Koeghan's latest book, Everton's Greatest Games: The Toffees' Fifty Finest Matches which covers standout fixtures from a club history stuffed with great occasions and memorable encounters.

The following is a chapter from Jim Koeghan's latest book, Everton's Greatest Games: The Toffees' Fifty Finest Matches which covers standout matches from a club history stuffed with great occasions and memorable encounters. "Dixie's 60", obviously, recounts the game where William Ralph Dean set the record for the most goals scored in a single league season, one yet to be matched and one unlikely ever to be broken.

Everton's Greatest Games is available now for purchase from Amazon and Waterstones.

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v Arsenal 3–3

5 May 1928
Football League Division One
Goodison Park
Attendance: 48,715

ALTHOUGH Dean had been scoring for fun since establishing himself as Everton’s first-choice centre-forward, the team had not prospered. The Blues ended the 1926/27 campaign in 20th position, one place off ‘the drop’.

Despite Dean’s contribution that season (albeit more limited than desired, after he spent a chunk of the early months of the campaign recovering from a serious motorbike accident), the team’s total goal tally deteriorated from the previous year, and at the back they were porous, shipping a greater number of goals than both clubs that were relegated.

In response, the board began bringing in recruits to address Everton’s problems. At the back, to plug up a defence that was worryingly leaky, Warneford ‘Warney’ Cresswell was signed from Sunderland, a player who subsequently became known as the ‘Prince of Full-Backs’.

Then, from Stockport County, Everton brought in the talented outside-right Ted Critchley – providing Dean with a source of delivery to match that he had been receiving from the diminutive Troup on the left.

As an investment to end the club’s permeable defence and get even more out of Dean, it was one that yielded spectacular dividends.

After a patchy start, form picked up dramatically, and by the end of November Everton were top.

Although they were unquestionably tighter at the back, a key reason for the club’s ascent up the table was the form of Dean, which was mesmerising.

With the deliveries provided by Everton’s wide men, Dean was on fire. By the end of that same November, the colossus of Goodison had played 15 games and found the net 27 times, including hat-tricks against Portsmouth, Leicester City and Manchester United.

Tentatively, Dean had his sights on the English goalscoring record, which had recently been set by George Camsell of Middlesbrough, who had scored 59 goals during the 1926/27 campaign (albeit in the second tier). With just over a third of the season gone, he was nearly half-way there.

Over the months that followed, despite a winless streak that lasted from mid-January until the end of March, Everton remained in the hunt for the title. It was a sustained assault, attributable in no small part to Dean’s continued potency.

By late March, after bagging a brace in a 2–2 draw against Derby County, he reached 45, claiming the record for most goals in a First Division season (previously held by Ted Harper of Blackburn Rovers).

As the season closed, both the club and Dean (although he slightly less so) were still well positioned to claim their respective titles. In the league, with three games to go, it was a head-to-head battle between Everton and Huddersfield Town for the title. In the goalscoring stakes, Dean needed nine more goals to beat Camsell’s record. For Everton’s unstoppable centre-forward, it was a tough proposition but not one beyond his skills.

Dean bagged two in a 3–2 win over Aston Villa and then followed this with four in a 5–3 victory over Burnley. At the same time, Everton pushed further ahead of Huddersfield, and, after the Yorkshiremen lost their penultimate match of the season (a game in hand away at Villa), the title was Goodison bound.

The presenting of the trophy would have been exciting enough for Evertonians. After all, it was the first time in over a decade that the club had won any silverware. But there was also the issue of Dean’s record to consider. Three more goals were needed to best Camsell, and there was just the one game left to do it.

But would the great man play?

In the penultimate match of the season, Dean had sprained a leg muscle and limped off. With Saturday approaching and the leg continuing to give him some jip, Everton’s trainer/physio Harry Cooke sprang into action.

‘From the Wednesday night until the Friday, he was with me at home, my home in Alderley Avenue, Birkenhead,’ Dean told John Roberts. ‘Old Harry kept putting clay plasters on [the muscle] until the Friday night, even leaving one on overnight as well. Old Harry cured it and on the Saturday, of course I was fit. ’

On the day itself, although the official attendance was said to be 48,715, it’s thought that around 60,000 (nervous) Blues crammed into Goodison to witness history being made.

Did the man himself share those nerves? Like he did at every home game, Dean caught the number 44 tram from Water Street, got off and walked along Goodison Road, chatting all the time to fellow fans. He was relaxed, motivated and, as he revealed to John Keith in Dixie Dean: The Inside Story of a Football Icon, confident in his abilities:

‘I need three goals against Arsenal, who were the greatest club in the land. But that didn’t worry me whatsoever, I always used to think, “I’m better than you. ”’

Despite Arsenal taking a quick lead through Shaw, the hopes and dreams of the fans were given a huge boost not long after, when Dean opened his account with a typically powerful header.

Minutes after Arsenal had kicked off again, the man himself was brought down in the box by Butler, who had been drawn into a reckless tackle. Penalty to Everton!

There was only person to take it. Goodison held its breath.

‘I intended to place the penalty in the corner,’ he later recalled. Instead ‘it went in-between the keeper’s legs. It wasn’t one of my better kicks. ’

Not that it mattered. Camsell’s record had been equalled. And, with most of the game remaining, Dean needed only one more to nudge out in front.

As the crowd waited for him to strike again, Arsenal levelled. With the title secured and that scoring record exercising minds, it was one of those rare occasions at Goodison when the opposition’s efforts to secure victory hardly mattered.

What was of more concern to the increasingly agitated crowd as the minutes ticked along was the growing impregnability of the Gunners’ defence, which seemed determined to spoil the day. No matter what Everton threw at it, the back line remained resolute.

And then, with around four minutes left, Everton won a corner. Troup trotted out to take it. As the ball came in, ‘Dean was in the midst of a bunch of players – friend and foe, and when it was a case of whose head was going to reach the ball first, it was a foregone conclusion it would be Dean’s. He nodded the ball into the right hand corner of the net,’ reported the Football Express.

Goodison exploded. It was a noise so loud, so the story went, that it sent the pigeons around the Pier Head scattering off into the sky.

‘You talk about explosions, and loud applause; we have heard many explosions, and much applause in our long pilgrimage, but, believe us, we have never heard such a prolonged roar of thundering, congratulatory applause before as to that which ascended to heaven when Dixie broke the record,’ Thomas Keats later wrote.

Along with that unprecedented roar, in the immediate aftermath of the goal Dean got to experience another ‘first’, as he later recalled to John Keith:

‘Somebody ran on the pitch and stuck his whiskers in my face and tried to kiss me. Well! I’d never seen a supporter run onto the field until that day. ’

This excitable Blue was then grabbed by the collar and pushed into the hands of a nearby policeman by the referee.

By contrast to the level of excitement in the crowd, the reaction of Dean and his fellow players was more measured. The man himself merely bowed to Goodison in response to his goal and then received a succession of handshakes from his team-mates (and the Arsenal keeper).

‘There was no pulling me about and all that in those days, there was a bit of a knock on the shoulder or a touch of the hand or something but there was never any of this here love-making going on,’ he later told John Roberts.

The remaining minutes of the match passed by in a deafening whirl of noise as the crowd sang and cheered without pause. When the end came, the pitch was flooded with Blues eager to celebrate not just the club’s first title win that decade but also the remarkable achievement of their beloved centre-forward.

Not that they would find Dean. Just prior to the game’s conclusion, the hero of the hour had already made a quiet exit, as he later confided to John Roberts: ‘I turned round to the referee and I said: “Look, I’m going off, if you don’t mind, tell them I’m going off for a ‘Jimmy’ or something. ” And he said: “Listen, if I were you I’d be in there now. ” I went off, and that was that, because I would have got murdered. ’

Although Arsenal had managed to sneak a late equaliser through Shaw, it did nothing to diminish the celebrations amongst the crowd. They had witnessed something truly remarkable.

Since that glorious day, although there have been great centre-forwards at Goodison and elsewhere within the game, none have come close to what Dean achieved. Football might have been different back then and the likelihood of scoring such a haul more realistic, but that shouldn’t undermine what he did.

Despite the game’s more open nature, it was immeasurably rougher. Football during the inter-war years was tough, and centre-forwards took the kind of punishment that would make modern players run to the referee in tears.

Scoring 60 goals in that era took skill, determination and an unerring eye for goal. Dean had the lot and did something memorable with them. And, more importantly, he did it all in a Blue shirt, playing for the club he loved.

Everton: Davies, Cresswell, O’Donnell, Kelly, Hart, Virr, Critchley, Martin, Dean, Weldon, Troup

Arsenal: Paterson, Parker, John, Baker, Butler, Blyth, Hulme, Buchan, Shaw, Brain, Peel

Referee: W. Harper

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