Jamie Yates

22 Posts
Tigers and Toffees – Everton FC Heritage Society: Live at the MKM Stadium

Tigers and Toffees – Everton FC Heritage Society: Live at the MKM Stadium

Jamie Yates On the afternoon of Thursday 8 October 2026, Everton Football Club Heritage Society (EFCHS) members Jamie Yates and Lewis Royden travelled east from Liverpool Lime Street, over the Pennines to Kingston-upon-Hull, to take part in the first event of its kind on such a scale in the society’s history. The story begins at Hill Dickinson Stadium on 19 February 2026, when around eighty members of the Senior Tigers Supporters Club made the opposite journey across to Merseyside for a stadium tour. Undeterred by one of their coaches having broken down on the way (turning a two and a…
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George ‘Bumper’ Clarkson: An Original Original

George ‘Bumper’ Clarkson: An Original Original

Everton superfan, shareholder, unofficial official and arguably Everton's oldest ever player and goalscorer! Our story begins with a curious little column, part of a series written by the esteemed Liverpool Echo sportswriter Ernest ‘Bee’ Edwards and published on page six of the newspaper, on Saturday, 20 October 1934. The text is accompanied by cartoonist Allason Moscrop’s detailed caricature of Clarkson, resplendent in coat and hat with signature chrysanthemum on his lapel. It reads as follows: Caricature of George Clarkson from Ernest Edwards’ nostalgic series ‘The Salt of the Soccer Crowd’ - Liverpool Echo, 20 October 1934 ‘Here’s one of the…
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Jessie Milne: The First Lady of Goodison Park

Jessie Milne: The First Lady of Goodison Park

Reflections on a pioneering woman's half century of service at Everton Football Club Jamie Yates With women’s football firmly back on the map and growing once more in popularity, much has rightly been made in recent times of the abrupt ban placed in December 1921 on women playing the game at Football Association affiliated club stadia in England. Twelve months prior, on Boxing Day 1920, Goodison Park had hosted a record crowd for women's football of around 46,000 (with as many as 10,000 more locked out) for a match between St Helens Ladies and the famous Preston factory team Dick,…
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From Kirkby Boys to Colwyn Bay; via Catterick’s Everton and a trip to Keflavik!

From Kirkby Boys to Colwyn Bay; via Catterick’s Everton and a trip to Keflavik!

Keith Williams: A Goalkeeper's Tale Jamie Yates Keith Williams was born at home, 21 Max Road in Knotty Ash, on 21 September 1952. Due to his father Oswald’s ill health, the Williams family relocated to Kirkby to live with his aunt Violet during the ‘Big Freeze’ of winter 1962. Everton Football Club were midway through their 1962/63 League Championship winning season at the time, and the extreme weather conditions caused much consternation as fixtures were cancelled up and down the country over the festive period. Keith attended Park Brow Junior School in Kirkby where he started taking his football a…
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A Bump in the Road to Immortality, or the Making of a Football Icon?

A Bump in the Road to Immortality, or the Making of a Football Icon?

Marking the centenary of the motorcycle accident which drove Dixie Dean to even greater heights . Jamie Yates . Star Green ‘Un, 2 January 1926 Sunday, 20 June 1926, a sunny summer’s day like any other. Two young people from Birkenhead with the world at their feet - nineteen-year-old professional footballer Bill Dean, and his friend, twenty-one-year-old draper’s assistant Evelyn Jones, tennis partners who played in Birkenhead Park close by to their respective childhood homes, set off for a jaunt on Dean’s recently purchased New Imperial motorcycle. By around four o’clock that afternoon they found themselves across the border in…
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“You Have to be Mad to be a Groundsman!” * – Bob Lennon, Groundsman of Everton Football Club

“You Have to be Mad to be a Groundsman!” * – Bob Lennon, Groundsman of Everton Football Club

Jamie Yates (* Bob Lennon, Goodison Park, Thursday 7 November 2024) ‘Everyone’s a groundsman before the game,Everyone’s a manager during the game,Everyone’s a pundit after the game!’ Goodison Park, 2006/07 (Photo: Jamie Yates) Robert ('Bob') Lennon was born at home at 14 Moss Lane, Lydiate, on Saturday, 20 June 1959. Just shy of two months previously, Everton Football Club finished the 1958/59 season with a whimper, losing four of their last five matches and slipping to a disappointing sixteenth place finish under new manager Johnny Carey. Not much better was to follow in 1959/60, as Carey’s entertaining but infuriatingly inconsistent…
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Earning His Wings: Flight Lieutenant (and Outside-Right) George Dalgliesh

Earning His Wings: Flight Lieutenant (and Outside-Right) George Dalgliesh

Jamie Yates Author’s Note: Spelling of the surname Dalgliesh varies across publications and official records, appearing as Dalgliesh or Dalgleish interchangeably. For clarification I have quoted sources verbatim throughout this article. George’s family employ the ‘Dalgliesh’ spelling. Finding the right George Dalgliesh was no easy task and took a couple of false starts. There was a George Dalglish born in Liverpool in 1922. It wasn’t him. Next came George Robert White Dalgleish, born in Edinburgh in 1924, a Civil Engineer and son of a prominent Church of Scotland minister. Close, but no cigar.  And then there he was. We were…
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James Prescott: Architect of the Original Goodison Park 

James Prescott: Architect of the Original Goodison Park 

Jamie Yates Think of Goodison Park and what comes to mind? So many memories. Walking up to the ground from whichever angle your matchday routine dictates, that bright flash of green as you emerge up the steps and take in the pitch for the first time, the towering Goodison Road main stand, Archibald Leitch’s famous lattice steelwork patterns adorning the front of the upper balcony of the Bullens Road in blue and white. Leitch became the preeminent architect during the first wave of great football stadia in the early decades of the twentieth century. His work became part of the…
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The Great Goalpost Desecrating Craze of the 1960s

The Great Goalpost Desecrating Craze of the 1960s

Jamie Yates For anyone who grew up with the 1988 BBC Official History narrated by John Motson as part of their Evertonian education, one of the most exhilarating montages is made up of footage from the 1962/63 season, early on in Harry Catterick’s glorious reign as manager. One particularly notable sequence is the footage from Saturday 22 September 1962, the Merseyside Derby at Goodison Park.  Rival captains Ron Yeats and Roy Vernon lead the teams out from the tunnel for the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park, Saturday 8 February 1964 (NB this is the season after the derby featured here. Thanks…
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The George Fleming Story

The George Fleming Story

Jamie Yates The build-up to Everton’s departure from Goodison Park, their home of 133 years in the summer of 2025, triggered a range of emotions and set the members of the Everton Football Club Heritage Society (EFCHS) off on various quests to delve deeper into the history of the old stadium, to commemorate records set there, celebrate watershed moments and hopefully unearth a few hidden historical gems along the way. Recent seasons have been turbulent, even by Everton standards, and I have taken huge solace in burying myself in the stories of some of the key moments and early heroes…
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