Reading the excellent story posted by Jonathan Oppenheimer has prompted me to write about how I became a Blue and my memories of Goodison Park, which can never be taken from me by Moshiri and his Board of yes-men (and woman), no matter the outcome of their disastrous time at our club.
It was the 1950s and I was hardly a toddler, sitting in my grandfather’s house along with my father. The radio was reporting on a football match and the word “Liverpool” was mentioned. It must have been a word I recognised so I shot up to my feet shouting “Yeah, Liverpool!” The stereophonic response from my grandfather and father, blue-blood Evertonians, was both frightening and to my young ears at a decibel never before experienced.
My father took up the story when he told me that almighty panic erupted. I was so frightened I ran out the house with my father hightailing it after me. My grandfather was shouting at the top of his voice not to let me run into the road. My father whilst chasing responded: “I’ll jockin’ strangle him first!”
My father caught me a moment before I stepped in front of an oncoming motorist. I have often thought if I was choosing to step in front of that car as a choice of death knell rather than going back into that house to face the music!
It was some time later when I was taken to my first match; but how come my father chose this game to introduce me to Goodison, he was never able to explain. It was a cup replay against Charlton and it was a night of dense fog. My father put me into the famous (or should that be infamous?) Boys Pen and told me to meet him in precisely the same spot he left me to go into the ground.
Coming out into a sea of faces, fathers looking for sons, it was chaotic. I couldn’t see my father, so I went looking for him. It was some time before we connected, I was both relieved and excited to see him but, for some reason, he welcomed me with a barrage of swear words whilst he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me along to the bus stop!
Just typing that story above, I seem to recall that my father’s stock answer to any question I raised was “Don’t be stupid!” – which was precisely the answer I got when I asked him if there was a Girls Pen?
Everybody’s first impression of Goodison Park is memorable but mine was miserable. There wasn’t anything to see as it was so foggy but at least I had attended, even if I didn’t see my first game, even along with its ignominious ending.
I then recall reading the Football Echo and my mother asking why I was crying? “Everton are bottom of the league, played 6 and lost 6.” She retorted that there were far more important things in life than football! I looked at my father for some support but he knew better!
Then, for the next game, one of my all-time heroes arrived, none other than Bobby Collins. At 5ft-3ins, he was by a mile, smaller than that other tiny hero of mine, Alan Ball. Neither of them were much bigger than the Duracell batteries they must have stuck up their rectums, as they never stopped running, with both packed out with a boxset of skills. I would have loved to have seen those two in the same team; nobody else would have hardly had a touch.
We all have our abiding memories of a game or a goal but my memory is of a single incident. My other hero was Alex Young. We were playing Burnley in a night match at Goodison and I think he grabbed a goal or two and, if memory serves me correctly, Alex’s cousin was in goal for Burnley. (That just might be a trick of memory, I have no idea where that came from, it just came to mind as I was typing.)
At one point, a pass was sent out to Alex who was out on the touch-line. He pulled the ball out of the air but the linesman shot up his flag to say it had gone out. Alex still held the ball and lowered it onto the line to show it was still in play. A chap in front of me was in awe. He turned round and said whilst miming the tucking action, “If I get home tonight and find Alex Young in bed with my missus, I will tuck him in”!
I live too far away to attend Goodison these days but as The Old Lady passes on the baton to the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, I will sit with a glass of something alcoholic, enjoy my store of memories, and never will I allow these past truly forgettable Moshiri years ruin it for me. My one wish is that the younger generation get to build their own memories at the new stadium, with a decent set of directors pointing the club in the right direction.