Everton: Where Have I Been and Where Am I Now? — Part One

My Dad took me to my first Everton game in September 1961, against Ipswich Town. I remember that we walked across to Longview, caught a bus to Old Swan, and then on a Corporation Football bus. It was all so exciting as we entered the old Paddock. My Dad had bought a bag of Everton Mints and I found it so amusing when he carefully folded each wrapper and flicked it down at an unsuspecting head nearer the front. A love affair was born. The Blues thrashed. The future unlikely champions won 5-2!

A few weeks later and West Ham were the visitors. I saw Albert Dunlop drop to his knees with the ball stuck between his ankles in the process of stopping a John Bond daisy-cutter penalty. A couple of seasons later, we went to see West Ham again. With the score at 1-1, and only minutes to go, the ball was squared to Alex Young who somehow hit the bar of an unguarded goal to deny us another win! On the BICC coach back to Prescot, all sorts of irrational excuses were being made for why the Golden Vision has missed an absolute sitter! Things like that stay with you all your life.

I lived in Wallace Drive, Huyton; just up the road were two club houses. Their occupants were Tommy E Jones and Mick Meagan. I became very friendly with the young Jones boys and was taken to Goodison by Tommy for a reserve game against Sheffield United. We were given a guided tour of the changing rooms before the match, sitting up in the old Goodison Road stand.

I was now a devoted teenager and going regularly to games with my mates and even on my own for an evening 1966 FA Cup Replay against Manchester City.

The biggest surprise in my young life came when my Dad managed to get tickets for the FA Cup Final against Sheffield Wednesday. Our tickets came from the Chairman of Liverpool FC at the time, Sid Reakes, self-made Prescot Haulage millionaire and Prescot Cricket Club president. We made the journey down on the midnight football specials, had the Cup Final Breakfast at Lyons Cornerhouse café, and then went down the Mall etc. How close we must have been to seeing the great Muhammad Ali running around the park!

The match must have been one of the best at the old stadium. When David Ford put Wednesday 2-0 up, my worst fears were exacerbated by the fact that Ford’s brother Jim was my form and PE teacher at Prescot Grammar School. Then, of course, the game swung decisively with the unerring boots of Mike Trebilcock and Derek Temple. The next day, as a family ,we were down by the Old Rocket pub to see the team pass by on their triumphant coach tour of the city.

As I got to 16, I had seen Howard Kendall miss two absolute sitters against Southampton and Spurs in his first two home games for the club and was questioning the wisdom of buying him from Preston! I had been to Wembley to see us losing to West Bromwich Albion in the 1968 FA Cup Final, I was now working the summer holidays at the BICC in Prescot which paid for season tickets in the Gwladys Street End.

Then came the divine revelation of what Ball, Harvey and Kendall were all about. I had a ticket for the opening game at Old Trafford against the European Cup Winners. That first half was absolutely exhilarating as the United goal lived a charmed life. The Blues tore through at will and we were suddenly 1-0 down totally against the run of play. Bally quickly equalised and the Blues went into overdrive but somehow we lost 2-1 because of Charlton and Best. I had seen the promised land of a brand-new stunning football team, culminating in the league title in 1970.

Time came to move on to St Paul’s Teacher Training College in Cheltenham. In my first-year digs were John and Bern who were equally as barmy over Blackpool and Spurs. For the next 3 years, we would travel and stay at parents’ houses watching the three teams at home and getting to grounds locally where they were playing. If not, we needed a fix and became regulars at Cheltenham Town long before they had Football League status!

I was not a noticeably confident youth with girls and was scalded several times by friends for putting off dates with my constant conversation about the Blues. After qualifying in 1973, I went to teach in Ipswich, where my Mum’s side of the family lived. I lived the year in the YMCA and hardly missed a home game at Portman Road including a 3-0 defeat for Everton. I got to some away games and was “lucky enough” to see us beat Norwich 3-1 with all four own goals!

In the Eighties, I met a fellow Blue in Worthing who was from St Helens, and we were the same school year. We immediately joined ESCLA led by John Collings(?). We were regulars on the ESCLA trains or on our own steam all over the South and Midlands. Our first trip was to Leicester to see a pivotal 2-1 win with a pair from Andy Gray. That is when we all realised what a wonderful team they were. The adage that great teams get results even when they are not playing well was stamped all over that performance!

I have heard so many funny things uttered by Blues supporters at matches, but my absolute favourite was at the 1986 semi-final at Villa Park which went to extra time and caused us to miss our reserved ESCLA seats back to London. We saw the reserved carriages go past us as we were on the local train from Villa Park. We were sitting near the halfway line when Graham Sharp missed a last-minute winner in normal time. As the teams were taking on water and coaching two old guys (reminiscent of Statler and Waldorf of muppets fame) we heard their conversation:

Waldorf, exasperated, “How did Sharp miss that one?”

Statler, even more exasperated, “Years of fucking practice!!!)

Anyone within earshot fell about laughing at their cynicism and of course, Sharp then scores the winner with a majestic extra-time volley, but we did miss our train!

I eventually found myself married and teaching in both of East and West Sussex. When the website “Friends Reunited” was at its peak in the early 2000s, a former pupil from Worthing wrote about me in the teacher’s memory section as follows. “Imagine my horror and sheer terror when I opened my GCE ‘O’ level Geography paper and discovered that there were no questions on Everton FC or cricket!”

A few years later, when I was a primary deputy head, the school secretary came into my class and asked if I could sign a typewriter supplies order for the young salesperson who followed her inside the room. In front of my class of Year 5s, he recognised me as his Maths teacher in Worthing who never stopped talking about Everton. My class were in hysterics, as was the secretary!

I have two wonderful daughters who both went to Universities in Manchester, overlapping by one year. I had remarried and was living in West Wales and would always arrange my visits to see them on Everon Home weekends. I took them a fair few times over that 5 years when the Moyes era had just started. Anytime I have taken them, we never lost, with the best being the 2-1 win over Manchester City when the lines, “There’s only one greedy bastard” were directed at Lescott on his first return to Goodison Park after his acrimonious departure.

As I got older, I looked around for new interests and found myself rediscovering my love of steam railways. I spent some eight years as a guard on the Kent and East Sussex Railway. That led on to railway modelling and one of my layouts, Rainford Stoops, which was a fictional heritage railway in West Lancashire, featured in the prestigious Railway Modeller Magazine. My home layout for quite a time was known as ‘Gobbs Heights’, a reference to the team in red! It also features an illuminated version of the Everton Lock-up! In my railway room, the trains run round under EFC memorabilia including framed programmes, team photos and a full-sized wooden replica of the nameplate of the LNER/British Railways Class B17/4 Locomotive 61663 Everton!

I had always wanted to teach abroad and, in 2009, Lynne and I went out to Kuwait to teach at the grandiosely named Gulf British Academy. The satellite package gave us every Premier League Match live plus full re-runs. I had the idea to try and bring ex-pat supporters together under a website, the Kuwait EX-Pat Football Supporters Group. Sadly, it was only partially successful despite having permission for access to the school hall, with live TV on a big screen. What was not to like but only three turned up for match one, seventeen sent in e-mails which included several local Kuwaitis who seem only to have heard of Chelsea. It soon folded! Still, I tried!

One of my sons-in-law, is a long-time season ticket holder at Arsenal. On odd occasions, his friend cannot go, and he phones me up to ask me to accompany him. Indeed, I was at the last game of last season when we went down 5-1. My daughter stopped him from telling me that the ticket was available unless the Blues were safe as I have had recent heart problems, diabetes type 2 and chronic depression to contend with. I have to say, even at that game, the best moment – baffling at first to the Gooners around us – was when the Everton section exploded into a riot of blue and white celebrating Man City’s winner over Aston Villa.

A few weeks ago, I turned 70 and my daughters put together a package of EFC membership, Goodison tour for my wife and I, and a subscription for match day programmes.

My health is not good, and I have only two main ambitions now. The first is to take my Gooner son-in-law to experience Goodison before it is too late. He surprisingly does not want to watch Arsenal. He fancies Brentford as that is who his grandfather supported but would fancy Spurs as he can really get behind the Blues.

My second ambition is to see the Blues in the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, although I realise that the club cannot use that name for obvious reasons. I really look forward to Sundays when Nick Durbin’s Mister Drone footage of the stadium diary appears.

I very rarely get to see the Blues in the flesh. I have developed an attachment to my local team in Northamptonshire, AFC Rushden and Diamonds in the Southern Premier League Central Division. It takes me back to days watching Prescot Cables!

I would like to express my thanks for all the joyous moments that Everton FC have brought me and the many Evertonians I have met over the years – and of course to ToffeeWeb that keeps my connection to all things Everton.

To be continued? Where I am now re: Everton FC

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