Shoot
‘A great insight into the roots of a club that could enthral anyone.’
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
Everton are one of the oldest, most respected and best supported teams in English football. They are founder members of the Football League and Premiership, nine times League Champions, five times FA Cup winners, and once European Cup Winners Cup winners. Theirs is one of the most fascinating stories in football encompassing the tales of such luminaries as Jack Sharp, Dixie Dean, Tommy Lawton, Dave Hickson, Alex Young, Brian Labone, Joe Royle, Greame Sharp, Neville Southall, Gary Lineker and Duncan Ferguson, their successes and failures, plus the fans memories and experiences of them.
To coincide with the 125th Anniversary of the foundation of Everton Football Club, as St Domingo's FC in 1878, ‘The School of Science’ tells the stories of the great and the good involved in Everton’s long and distinguished history. It sets out to bring back to life many fans memories and add fresh light to times they weren’t around to experience. It aims to be a comprehensive history of the club, a true record of the club’s long and proud history.
Starting with Everton’s humble beginnings as a church side, it will tell of how they developed to become the city’s biggest team and founder members of the Football League. It will tell of the split that led to the formation of their neighbours and great rivals Liverpool, and with it the move to their present home Goodison; of the first Championship win; and when the FA Cup was first brought back to Merseyside in 1906. Success has always seemed to have been followed by tragedy for Everton, and the book will describe how Everton twice had Championship winning sides broken up by war, in 1915 and 1939. Imbetween these dates came Dixie Dean; his 60 goal season; and Dean’s heir, Tommy Lawton, often described as England’s most gifted centre forward. Crowds in this time regularly topped 60,000 and Everton won the Championship three times in the interwar years.
After the Second World War, they were a club in decline and eventually relegated. The book describes how this decline was arrested by the emergence of Dave Hickson, and later, greatness was returned in the Sixties by the chairmanship and money of pools magnate John Moores, plus the wily management of Harry Catterick. Everton’s ‘Golden Era’ was characterised by such legends as Alex Young, Roy Vernon, Ray Wilson and Joe Royle. Their tales both on and off the pitch are as fascinating today as they were then. The Seventies were a period of living in Liverpool’s shadow, but ‘The School of Science’ tells of some of the black humour that made this decade bearable and of many of the characters involved at the time. Out of seemingly irreversible decline came the successes of the mid-eighties, glory years that many still fantasise about: the dream team of Southall, Ratcliffe, Reid, Steven, Sharp, Gray, Heath et al. Uncertainty, then more decline came with the departure of Howard Kendall in 1987, and later managers failed to live up to his success. His latest successor, David Moyes, has shown signs that the good times may not be too far away and ‘The School of Science’ concludes with an assessment of his prospects.
Essentially a narrative history, each chapter focuses loosely on the experiences of an individual involved with the club – be it a fan, a player, or as in the case of the attached chapter, the chairman – and tells the story in the context of that individual. It is an alternative but more interesting method of telling history and gives the reader a way of relating to the events as they unfold on the page. The intention is to entertain as much as to inform and provide the definitive record of Everton’s fascinating and extensive past.
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