Goodnight Sweetheart, It's Time To Go

My first ever football match at Goodison Park would have been when I was about 6 or 7 years of age.  

My dad wanted to take me to see Brazil play during the 1966 World Cup final, however my mother thought it might be a bit unsafe. This was possibly because I was known as the great little escaper due to the fact I could just go off to wander on my own from an incredibly early age. Mind you, I suspect that even I would have struggled to have got onto the pitch to play with Pele.

I made it 10 minutes into the match before the excitement hit my bladder (as a matter of fact 10 minutes would have been quite good for me)! When I need the loo when I really need the loo. It’s the same to this day! 

I told dad I had to go and perhaps foolishly assumed he would take me.

Instead, he just pointed over his shoulder and said it's up that way, up some steps, down some other steps and you'll be able to smell it. It was obvious he wasn’t coming with me but as I've said I quite liked the exploring, so I wandered off toddled my way through the crowd.  It didn’t take long to find the incredibly smelly trough with like a low concrete wall that passed for a toilet.

I'll be honest, I felt a bit proud of myself then. The problem started went I back into the terraces.

 I'm thinking to myself it can't be that difficult to get there back to dad. How wrong I was. When I got to the top of the steps, I just saw a wall of incredibly tall men. I couldn't even see the pitch, let alone dad.

Suddenly I began to feel very afraid. I must have also looked it too because some man turned around and looked at me and said, ‘where you going, lad?’ I said I just got back from the toilets, and I can't find me dad.

So, this bloke said, ‘where are you standing?’ and I told him it was just behind the goal. He laughed. ‘we're all behind the bleeding goal, son!’ But he shouted has anybody lost a little lad.

There was no response so he picked me bodily and asked if I could spot dad. I still couldn't see couldn’t so this bloke literally passed me forward like a prototype mosh pit saying the lads lost, pass him on until he can see his dad. Can you imagine that happening these days? I don't even think I would want it to happen these days.

After what seemed like ages, I could see dad walking towards me with a face like thunder.

Like I say that was nearly 60 years ago. Last weekend was Everton’s last first team match at Goodison Park. Dad’s been gone 40-odd years he was there in spirit. me and my brother went down. We didn’t have tickets but we took photographs in the crowd, we all had a laugh and maybe add a bit of sniffle.  The crowd was loud both inside and out the stadium. But somewhere at the back of my head all I could hear was a singular voice saying;  ‘Joe Royle's just scored a bloody own goal.’