Being Blue

Why I am an Everton Fan

Seeing as how this weekend is the derby game at Anfield it seemed appropriate to interrupt the flow of my life and fill you in on why and how Everton entered in to my life. I was after all bought up in a West Midlands home where the parents couldn't careless about football and my only sports-minded relative, Uncle Eric, was an avid Wolverhampton Wanderers supporter, always going on about some chap named Billy Wright!

I was ten years old. It is 1966, and England had just won the World Cup for the first time. Football fever was at an all time high across England. I can remember collecting and swapping player stickers with my mates at St Nicholas School in Codsall. I was an ardent philatelist and so was already familiar with the countries playing, their flags etc. from the collection of stamps I had accumulated; this just added a new dimension to the sport. One of the players that stood out to me at that time was a diminutive red-headed player for Blackpool F.C., Alan Ball. At about 5’4” and redheaded he was about the same size I was at 10 years old.

I had just started taking an interest in following football and I immediately took a shine to this midfield maestro. It was the same year that Everton won the F.A. Cup, and Alan Ball was transferred from Blackpool to Everton, hence sealing my fate. How could I not be an Everton supporter? The player I liked the best, who actually bore a slight resemblance to me, was just transferred to the best team in football. It was love at first sight, and I have been an ardent and loyal follower ever since.

Unfortunately the physical resemblance was where Ball’s relationship and I stopped. As much as I loved football I was an absolutely hopeless player. Tactically I was fine out on the pitch. How to mark and cover a player? Not a problem. Physically as a young man I was fit and able to run around like crazy, I just couldn’t do it with a ball at my feet. I was not blessed with the innate ability to participate in sports at all. When the kids picked their sides in P.E. it was always “You can have Sadler, we had him last week!” No one wanted me! I ended up being shunted away in to the goal so that I wouldn’t have to touch the ball much! Actually I did develop into a decent ’keeper, never a budding Gordon West, but did play on the University team in Texas a time or two, a few years later.

I sucked at everything I tried in sports until my last year of school when my hand eye coordination kicked in, and I was able to at least participate well in squash and basketball (I even have an old certificate someplace where I represented Seisdon Rural District), but football was to be a sport of watching from the stands. Herein lays the next obstacle my non-football family threw at me. My dad was a lay preacher in a church organization that attended services on Saturday! Yes that’s right, the day that professional football was played on almost exclusively in the 1966’s and 70’s therefore I was forbidden to attend Saturday games, instead I was sitting in a wooden pew all day waiting to dart out at the end of services, we met in a location in Birmingham, to buy the “pink” and find out all the fresh scores to read in the car on the twenty five mile journey home.

Oh, and by the way, from 1969 onwards, when my parents black and white television went out after watching the rescue of the Apollo Thirteen astronauts (it literally went on the blink as they pulled the last astronaut on board the rescue ship) they never replaced it, so of course watching Match of the Day was also out of the question. I had to be happy with getting the scores in the “pink” and then waiting until Sunday morning when my Dad would drive to the Newspaper Shop to get the Sunday Telegraph and then sitting at his feet, literally licking my lips waiting for him to get to the Sports section of the paper (he would never give up an unread section until he had perused it first), which was always the last thing he read since he really had no interest in sports, to devour every word of every game that the paper reported.

As my love affair with Everton, and football, grew I learned we too had a hero from the “old days” Dixie Dean, who by my standards put Billy Wright to shame. Alan Ball made a fashion statement by wearing white soccer boots so I did too! My Dad, noticing my growing interest did make attempts, or at least an attempt, to encourage my interest. Living in the Wolverhampton area, we often used to drive by their stadium, Molineux, and on this one occasion Leeds United were in town to play the Wolves in a mid week game, must have been around ’71 or ’72. Dad decided to take me. My first professional game ever! I can remember the noise from the outside of the stadium, the crowds waiting outside to buy a ticket. It seemed like an interminably long wait in the cue until just five people ahead of us the word came back, they are sold out! NO! He never tried again.

There were a couple of occasions around the same time that a group of people from church actually attended either a midweek or Sunday game to see Birmingham City play at St. Andrews in Birmingham and I did finally get my taste of the crowd and the noise, the sounds and cheers and raucous humour that abounds in football stadiums, but it wasn’t Everton.

When I was 16, a new boy, Phil Chappell, moved in to our little village, Codsall Wood (about 8 miles from Wolverhampton) and started riding the bus to school with me. Within the first couple of days we established he too was an Everton fan. the only other one at Codsall Comprehensive School, and so we became best friends. It was with his help and my budding maturity at 16-17 years of age, that my parents allowed me out from under the proverbial ministerial thumb and to attend a regional football game. Everton were coming to play West Bromwich Albion, and Phil, Keith Webb (a West Brom fan), and I were allowed to catch the bus into town and go see my beloved team play in person for the very first time. We won 1-0! I remember the fans screaming obscenities at each other, trying to get a fight brewing (and this was two hours before the game started), and at the end of the match being swept off our feet by the onrushing fans as both teams supporters met in the middle of the field for a fist cuffs as the players were leaving the pitch.

How the three of us stayed together I have no idea. I do remember clearly seeing the back of Howard Kendall as he made his way off to the locker rooms. I yelled “Hey Howie” and seeing him stop and look back and smile! I couldn’t have been more satisfied. Of course by the time we got back out on the street we had missed the last bus home and ended up hitchhiking and getting a ride in a Mini from a couple of Pakistani boys that went a good 25 miles out of there way just to take us home.

I graduated from Codsall Comp in 1974, my folks moved to Gnosall, just outside Stafford, and I stayed at home that last year, working for the Stafford DHS as a clerk, and saving my money as I had been accepted to attend Ambassador College, a church oriented school in Texas, in the autumn of 1975. It was in this final year that again a second opportunity came to see Everton play back in Wolverhampton. Again I arranged to meet up with Phil and we met at a pub close to Molineux and had to endure a 1-0 loss. Since he lived in the area I had to catch the train back to Stafford alone, so after bidding him farewell, over a couple more pints, I took the walk by myself, through enemy territory, to the British Rail station.

Now I had read about, and listened to lurid stories on the news about football thugs but up until now had never witnessed any of this type of behavior for myself let alone become involved in or be accosted by it myself. I had purchased a silk scarf adorned with my teams name and insignia that was knotted around my neck. I kept it handily tucked in side my Navy blue raincoat, with the collar turned up against the evening chill that accompanied the ever present mist that night.

As I approached the station I saw a local Bobby, another Everton supporter hand cuffed to his wrist, approaching us on the side walk. Evidently this fella had been involved in some thuggery down at the station. I stepped aside to let them past and the young man reached out and smacked me in the lughole with his free hand. My own supporter! I let that go for what it was and managed to get onto the Stafford bound train and settle in to a carriage by myself. After a few moments the train lurched forward and I settled in for the thirty minute journey. I had relaxed and my teams colors evidently were now displayed at my neck. Enough so that a group of marauding Wolves fans, parading up he train, invited themselves into my carriage, and demanded my scarf as their spoils of war. Having just spent hard earned cash on this ripple of silk I was reluctant to part with it and so declined their offer.

Now it should be said that although I was 18 and considerably older than all of them, they looked to be about 12-16 year old yobs, there were about 20 of them, all in my carriage and me stuck in the corner. The ringleader, and pimply faced brash youth with black leather gloves, reached his hand forth and tugged at the scarf causing, as silk tends to do, for the knot to tighten. Now it wasn’t coming of unless it was to be cut with a knife, a thought I did not really relish anticipating. In a feat of stupendous (or stupid) bravado I demanded that he remove his hand from the vicinity of my neck, for which he willing obliged me, instead sticking the now gloved fist into my right eye!

Luckily for me the train guard happened to come by at that moment to check my ticket, and pulled the emergency cord, stopping the train, and deftly removing all offending parties from the train. I lived to fight another day! When I arrived in Stafford my Dad and my Uncle Cavin were waiting in the car for me. I slipped into the back seat and we carried on a conversation regarding the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the loss that had stricken Everton when my uncle finally turned around to address me and I remember his face convulsing in laughter at the site of the pigeon’s egg that was emerging from my sore and swollen eyebrow!

All these years and I had never made it to the City of Liverpool let alone the hallowed grounds of Goodison Park and I had to leave for America. Upon reaching the States in 1975 I was dismayed to find no football on television or in the papers. America had yet to recognize soccer as a sport beyond what a small boy might participate in until the age of 5 when he went to school! For years I lived in an oasis, cut off from any football news and lost contact with what Everton did from 1976 to about 1985. During those years of living in a wilderness, otherwise known as Texas and Oklahoma, where football, the American type, was king of the heap I yearned for news from home.

My parents did not send me news, they hated sports. Good old Uncle Eric did send me newspaper sports pages for about the first 6 months until cancer took him swiftly and suddenly, leaving me bereft of Everton news. In 1985 I was vacationing back home with my parents in jolly old England. My Dad received a call on the Friday I was there that he was needed to preach the following day in Liverpool as their pastor was ill. I was no longer attending worship ceremonies at my parent’s church but happily traveled with them to Liverpool, as, yes you guessed it, Everton were playing at home and I could go worship at Goodison Park. Not just playing at home but they were the currently the number one team in the league. They were having the season of seasons, and giant-killers, non-league Telford, were visiting in a F.A. Cup clash that promised to be a glut of goals in out favor.

I remember clearly catching a large black taxi cab, to within a mile of the stadium, and getting out to walk with the blue clad throngs, a veritable sea of blue and white, scarves and hats. The game was not the best. Telford fought hard and long and although we eventually triumphed 3-0, we had struggled early on and the gilt was stricken from the game. I had been hoping for a more glorious victory, something along the lines of the best game I can remember. I sat in the car on the way home from George on November 21, 1971, reading the scores in the “pink”, from the First Division, aloud to my little brother Peter, when I thought I must have misread the score line. Everton 8 Southampton 0! Nonetheless, the win was great, and the thrill of being inside those hallowed walls was tremendous. I has been 27 years since that date and I have only been back to England once since that occasion and so have never again been able to see my team play again in person.

Thankfully soccer has emerged in a huge way in the States. I have actively coached my three sons teams, played in a men’s league (I wasn’t half bad compared to the average American player) until I was 42 and just couldn’t keep up with 20 year olds anymore. I have seen the emergence of a variety of different leagues, witnessed the World Cup in America, and even written about it as a sports editor with the OKC Sports Fan Forum. I visit all the Everton sites daily, and keep up with Everton everyday of the week.

Premiership football is shown on the television here every weekend so I am no longer wandering in a fruitless desert. Unfortunately the time and cost of traveling to Ohio and Texas was prohibitive when Everton were on their pre-season tour the last couple of years, and I am now a responsible businessman with financial obligations, but perhaps should they come again they might visit Phoenix or Los Angeles which might allow me a chance to see them play again; and who knows one of these years perhaps I will again visit England during the season and get the opportunity to once again cross the line at the gates of Goodison Park unless we end up in Kirkby!