Latest – Page 6 – Everton FC Heritage Society

19

Jan

1 Comment

1960-1969, 1970-1979, Articles, Latest, Obituary, Rest in Peace, Rob Sawyer

John Hurst (1947-2024)

A Tribute by Rob Sawyer ‘The Last of the Corinthians’ is a phrase used to describe one of Everton’s great captains, Brian Labone. However, John Hurst, his defensive partner in Everton’s great side of the late 1960s, embodied many of the same qualities that gave Labone his sobriquet. John in the mid 1960s Like Roger Kenyon, who would also come through the ranks at Bellefield and be unlucky not to collect full international honours, John hailed from Blackpool. A centre-forward and inside-forward as a youth, the leggy Lancastrian had represented Blackpool schoolboys and also received England youth honours. Harry Catterick…

15

Jan

By Jim Keoghan

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1960-1969, Articles, Goodison, Jim Keoghan, Latest

The Battle of Goodison Park

Jim Keoghan Everton v Leeds United Football League Division One, 7 November 1964 Everton 0 Rankin, Labone, Brown, Gabriel, Rees, Morrissey, Temple, Pickering, Vernon, Young, Stevens Leeds United 1 (Bell) Sprake, Reaney, Bell, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, Giles, Storrie, Belfitt, Collins, Johanneson To the modern fan, one reared on a game where crowds are often dispassionate tourists, players overly protected, and referees the agents of the authorities’ aims to make football as bloodless as possible; the past must look like a foreign country. The days of swaying crowds seething with a palpable sense of malign fury, defenders who would soften forwards…

James Meunier – The Cricketing footballer with French Heritage

08

Jan

By Rob Sawyer

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1910-1919, Articles, Latest, Players, Rob Sawyer

James Meunier – The Cricketing footballer with French Heritage

Rob Sawyer Mikael Madar was the first French national to represent the Everton Toffees, signed by Howard Kendall in 1998. The Francophone Elie Hurel, from Jersey, but with French parents, briefly lined up alongside the great Dixie Dean in the 1930s, However, a footballer with Gallic heritage was on the books for Everton in the first decade of the 20th Century. James Brown Meunier was born on 4 April 1885 in the Birmingham area to a French-born father (Stanislas – sometimes written as Stanislass) and English mother (Jane). Little is known about Stanislas’ background on the continental mainland, but in…

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

25

Dec

By Steve Zocek

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1990-1999, Articles, Latest, Players, Steve Zocek

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…

15

Dec

By Rob Sawyer

3 Comments

1950-1959, Articles, Latest, Players, Rob Sawyer

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…

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

11

Dec

By Rob Sawyer

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1950-1959, Film and Media, Interview, Latest, Lewis Royden, Rob Sawyer

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…

11

Dec

By David Prentice

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1910-1919, Articles, David Prentice, History, Latest, Players, WW1

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…

09

Dec

By Jim Keoghan

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1878-1889, Jim Keoghan, Latest, Players

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…

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

28

Nov

By Rob Sawyer

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1930-1939, 1940-1949, Articles, Latest, Rob Sawyer

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…

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

26

Nov

By Rob Sawyer

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1960-1969, Articles, Latest, Players, Rob Sawyer

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…