60 Years a Blue

Watching games after then was a bit hit and miss, although I managed most of our 'home' (well it seemed like it at the time) games at Wembley in the '80s, not to mention that wonderful night in Rotterdam.

But your memory of THAT Wimbledon game really raised a smile. I too was in a Ford Sierra, not up a mountain but on the M1 heading north to Tamworth with my partner Beryl to visit her mum, as we did most weekends after Beryl's dad had passed away not long before.

We didn't say much on the journey as I was listening to the radio and turning suicidal as the miles rolled on and the goals went in against us. By the time we arrived, it was 2-2 but I was no less nervous. We went in the house and the first thing Beryl said to her mum Ida was "Come on, mum, let's go out in the garden and leave Mike to the radio". Cometh the hour, cometh the man... Graham Stuart scored the winner and I could go out and say hello to Ida.

And it was Graham Stuart who phoned me at home a few weeks back as part of the club's initiative to get in touch with supporters who they thought might be on their own. I'm not sure if the calls were just to hospitality members – I've been in The Captains Table lounge at the Park End for the past five years – or that they knew I had lost Beryl in January (which I know they did as they had sent a nice sympathy card), but I found our chat as welcome and heart-warming as what he'd done that day in 1994. It really summed up the Everton family (oh, and I think he wouldn't mind if this season was declared null and void for one obvious reason!).

Don, I hope we all get to enjoy many more years with our season tickets. I'm holding on to mine ready to swap for one at Bramley-Moore Dock when the time comes... now that's faith for you! Stay safe.

I left to go to university in '64 and have never lived within 120 miles of Merseyside since. Nevertheless I have followed Everton, visiting Goodison as regularly as possible and watching them in away grounds when they played in the area.

Nowadays, the physical effort makes trips home more difficult. I envy you your ticket and hope you get to see a great Everton team as I did in the early sixties.

All take care and stay safe and well.

A poem (sort of) written by a Goodison Shelley or Keats of the time.

My first ever game had been to see Stanley Matthews at Anfield and Liverpool won 5-2. However, it was my second game that turned me into a blue and I blame Dave Hickson.

His dash and his mop of hair captured my 7-year-old imagination and, despite my family being reds, I became a blue. I think I rather expected 12 goals a game to be a common occurrence!

Bill Short, I remember, was the Plymouth keeper and he was rotund, shall we say. Thanks for the rhyme, Dave.

By the way, Rick, that was a good time to start watching The Blues, because those eight goals versus Plymouth were part of the 20 they scored in three games... it might even have been consecutive matches: 6-1 verses Brentford and 6-2 versus Derby County. John Mac will correct me if I'm wrong.

You mentioned the Pink Echo and it brought back quite a few memories as a kid. Dad was an avid Red, Nan was a Blue, and my Uncle Jimmy took me to my first game when I was about 7 I think, Albert Dunlop going the wrong way and saving a penalty between his legs... I think it was against West Ham. Anyway, the seed was sown.

As a kid, my handwriting was awful, much to the consternation of my parents. Dad had flowing wonderful handwriting, as did his Dad... 'copper plate' they called it. Mine was like a crab crawling through an ink blob.

So my Uncle decided to help me out, bought me an exercise book, a biro, and said I had to copy, word for word, the match report in the Pink Echo every Saturday night – and if he could read it without asking what the words were, then I would get a florin... yes, before Decimalisation!

The lure of money was too great, so I endeavoured to do, badly. Each report would take me the whole night. After three weeks, I had improved to the point he could almost read it and so I was given a shilling... "Keep going," he would tell me.

3 months later, I was getting half-a-crown a week. My mum kept the exercise book long after I forgot. A few years back, before she died, she would tell me how the family would laugh at me but how glad she was I persevered because it fostered in me a desire to read, to understand, write, and a love and passion for all things Blue.

Strange I guess because history repeats. I was the only Blue in our family; my sisters and Mum and Dad all red. Now my own family is all Blue... except for one. How that happened, I don't know... must have landed on his head!

Good one, Don!

This lady was distraught because her daughter kept bad marks in school, teacher after teacher downgrading her work. One day, another teacher sent for the mother and, as soon as she got there, the mother started talking:

“I know what you're going to say, but she does her best and tries as hard as she can.”

The teacher told the mother, “She does very well and she's very bright, but her writing could be a lot better.”

That teacher had taken the time to decipher the writing and read, properly, what the girl had written. That teacher made the mother very proud and the girl never looked back.

The girl's name was Christine!!!

No, it wasn't... but it shows how people can be written off even when they are a lot better than they seem.

There is a passion and drive in scousers you seldom see elsewhere. A passion about who they are and where they come from, a drive to be the best they can, an ability to laugh at themselves rather than at other people, and a tribal link that knows no geographical boundary.

I was at that game, I think we got beat fair and square. The incident I remember mostly from the game was an Everton fan coming on the pitch at half time for some reason and being chased by two or three bizzies which turned into four or five. This fella made a mockery of Eddie Cavanagh's chase in the 1966 FA Cup Final at Wembley, they eventually caught him and marched him up the tunnel where the players come out.

Two minutes later,he's out again, escaped, and the chase started all over again... brilliant! He could swerve better than Stanley Mathews.

He was indeed in the promotion squad of 1954, and played in 18 games before giving way to Eddie Wainwright. His 19th and last game that season was away to Lincoln City; although I was at Sincil Bank that day, my only memory is the fact that Tommy Eglington scored in a 1-1 draw.

Ted Buckle's last game for Everton was at outside-left in a 5-0 defeat to Portsmouth at Fratton Park on the 16 November 1954.