Latest

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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Bobby Parker – an Everton hero

Bobby Parker – an Everton hero

[NB. A revised article on Bobby Parker by Rob Sawyer and other relevant links can be found here ] ................................................................ Bobby Parker - an Everton hero by David Prentice (2021) 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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Barry Hewitt (1953-2023) – A Tribute

Barry Hewitt (1953-2023) – A Tribute

by Rob Sawyer, with members of Everton FC Heritage Society Members of Everton FC Heritage Society were saddened to learn of the death of Barry Hewitt on 12 November 2023 from cancer. He may have been Suffolk-born, but his devotion to the Toffees was absolute for more than half a century, and he was a great friend to the Society. Barry was born in Ipswich on 19 May 1953. Always keen on football, he had been a talented goalkeeper in his youth – he represented Suffolk schools and had a trail at Ipswich Town but chose not to pursue it…
Read More
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…
Read More
Pat Nevin interviewed by EFC Heritage Society in St Luke’s

Pat Nevin interviewed by EFC Heritage Society in St Luke’s

Before the Bournemouth home fixture on 7 October 2023, former Everton star winger Pat Nevin made a visit to St Luke’s to meet fans with copies of his latest book ‘Football and How to Survive it.’ Rob Sawyer and Lewis Royden of the EFCHS Media Team met up with Pat before his book signing session, to talk about his career and his new book. https://youtu.be/vYZqg9kiuTU?si=bPWGsBXRg-ehBaLg Pat Nevin with Lewis Royden (left) and Rob Sawyer (right) Photos by Sarah Deboe (EFCHS / MintCollective) and Rob Sawyer Click for Amazon linkClick for Amazon link
Read More
Remembrance at Goodison Park 2023

Remembrance at Goodison Park 2023

Armistice Day Service, The Fallen of Everton FC Memorial, Goodison Park [This year, due to the away fixture at Crystal Palace on 11 November, the Armistice Day service was pulled forward to 9 November 2023]. Many thanks are due again to Paul Kelly (right) of Everton FC Heritage Society (supported as ever by his wife Jean), in organising the service, despite a period of very poor health – this is an event they have now organised with dedication for a decade. . Click to open PDF leaflet The service was conducted by the Reverend Henry Corbett, Chaplain to Everton Football…
Read More