Articles

Son of My Father (part 19): Albert and Paul Holmes

Son of My Father (part 19): Albert and Paul Holmes

                              Holmes Sweet Holmes                                  Albert Holmes Albert Valentine Holmes was born on 14 February 1942, St. Valentine’s Day, hence the middle name Valentine. In his teens, Albert attracted attention for his football skills and was wanted by Rotherham United, but declined in order to prioritise his focus on his studies, which were more important to him. He started work by taking on an apprenticeship with British Gas (East Midlands Gas) as a gas fitter. The works had a football team for which Albert played. He was also involved in local football and, at the age of  sixteen, matched up against opponents…
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Cyril Lello – Everton’s Shropshire Lad

Cyril Lello – Everton’s Shropshire Lad

By Rob Sawyer Ludlow, now the gastronomic capital of the beautiful county of Shropshire, is considered a football backwater, yet even seventy years after his sporting heyday, Cyril Lello is held in high esteem in the market town. In Everton’s dark days of the early 1950’s, with the team struggling to return to the topflight of English football, it was the Salopian, a quiet man with matinee idol looks, who brought authority, effort - and no little ability - to the Blues cause.  The road to Goodison Park was a long one: Cyril Frank Lello came into the world on…
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Tommy ‘T.G.’ Jones by his former team mate John Cowell

Tommy ‘T.G.’ Jones by his former team mate John Cowell

Rob Sawyer in conversation with former Pwllheli goalkeeper John Cowell on his association with Everton and Wales legend T.G.Jones. Tommy G. Jones – often known by his initials, T.G., was idolised by Everton and Wales supporters in the late 1930s and 1940s. Dubbed the Prince of Centre-halves by devoted fans, Jones was described by Dixie Dean as the finest all-round player he had ever seen. A league title winner in 1939, Jones lost many of his best years to the war, and picked up a debilitating ankle injury in a Merseyside derby in 1944. Everton team in 1948 – TG…
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Bobby Parker – an Everton hero

Bobby Parker – an Everton hero

Bobby Parker is an Everton hero. A real life, bona fide hero in the truest definition of the word. On a football pitch Robert Norris Parker was a goalscoring hero who struck at the rate of almost a goal a game. But off it he was a war-hero, a man who sacrificed a sparkling career for his country – cruelly a sacrifice precious few people were aware of. Everton’s history is littered with what might have been stories – but none is more tragic than the experience of a superb Scottish centre-forward who deserves a place near the top of…
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Everton’s First League Match

Everton’s First League Match

Everton 2 v 1 Accrington Football League Division One, 8 September 1888 Anfield - Attendance: 12,000 - Referee: J Bentley Everton: Smalley, Dick, Ross, Holt, Jones, Dobson, Fleming, Lewis, Chadwick, Waugh, Farmer Accrington: Horne, Stevenson, McLellan, Haworth, Pemberton, Wilkinson, Lofthouse, Bonar, Holden, Chippendale, Kirkham It started with just twelve. A dozen trailblazers striking out to create what would become the greatest football league in the world (at least until the Premier League ruined the top flight with its orgy of consumption, its vapid razzmatazz, and its Jamie Carraghers). The 8 September 1888 represented a watershed moment in English Football. After…
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The Goodison Bugler’s Last Post – The Life of Francis Hamill

The Goodison Bugler’s Last Post – The Life of Francis Hamill

Rob Sawyer Unlike many clubs, Everton FC has always eschewed the use of in-match music to spur on the team or celebrate a goal – or so I thought. Tom Walker A conversation with veteran Toffees supporter Tom Walker gave me this nugget about the late 1940s, "‘The Everton Bugler used to sit in the top of the Bullens Road stand and sound the charge if we were attacking." Further corroboration of the existence of a supporter (or supporters) bringing a touch of brass to Goodison comes from Sir Paul McCartney. When recalling his childhood for the mid-1990s Anthology project…
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Derek Temple and The Story of Everton’s 1966 Cup Glory

Derek Temple and The Story of Everton’s 1966 Cup Glory

by Rob Sawyer with Derek Temple Derek Temple with his wife Maureen, pictured at home with Rob Sawyer in July 2023 As Everton kicked off their 1966 FA Cup campaign the omens were inauspicious, the club’s previous taste of cup glory had been 33 years previously when Dean, Stein and Dunn hit the goals to defeat Manchester City. A season of underachievement in the league had boiled over the previous weekend. In the aftermath of a 2-0 defeat on an icy pitch at Bloomfield Road, the infamous ‘Blackpool Rumble’ (© David France) took place in the car park. Some Toffees…
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Bill Kenwright CBE 1945-2023

Bill Kenwright CBE 1945-2023

Our condolences go to Bill Kenwright’s family and loved ones, plus all those affected by his recent passing. Ken Rogers, Chairman of Everton FC Heritage Society, spoke to Paul Salt of Radio Merseyside Sport about his time spent with the late Everton chairman when working at the Echo: (22 mins in): Below is the official statement released by the club on the Chairman's passing; RIP, Chairman Bill Kenwright CBE
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Richard ‘Dickie’ Boyle

Richard ‘Dickie’ Boyle

By Rob Sawyer [Above photo: Dickie Boyle of Everton c.1894(colourised by George Chilvers) ] Everton was awash with Sons of the Rock in the early years of the Football League: fellow Dumbarton-raised John Bell, and the long-serving Jack Taylor, the latter being the captain of Everton’s first victorious FA Cup side in 1906. No less vital and dedicated to the Toffees cause in the last years of the nineteenth century was Richard Hill Boyle. Commonly known as Dickie (or Dicky), he was one of those indomitable Everton servants, like Peter Farrell and Mike Lyons, who never earned the silverware he…
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A Remembrance Day visit to Chile, November 2011

A Remembrance Day visit to Chile, November 2011

John Shearon (The Ruleteros) The Background to the Everton FC War Memorial Plaques When Dr. David France first started the search for the Everton players who had given their lives in the two World Wars, who would have thought the net would have fallen as far as South America? While Paul Wharton, Dr. John Rowlands and Dr. France set about identifying the Goodison fallen, Frank Gorman and Linda Lines from the Ruleteros Society were busy tracking down the details of two ex-pats, Frank Boundy and Malcolm Fraser. These co-founders of Everton Football Club in Chile both died on the Somme…
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