Everton’s famous Goodison Park ground is commemorated by 100 memories of events there contained in a new souvenir book reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
To many, it is more than just a football ground. It is a place where they grew up, made lifelong friends and experienced all sorts of emotional highs and lows.
For some, it is their final resting place.
Everton Football Club moved out of Goodison Park in May 2025 bound for a spacious, modern home on the banks of the Mersey less than two miles away.
But Goodison will not be forgotten. How could it be after providing generations of Evertonians with some of their richest football memories over 133 years.
The ground, known as The Grand Old Lady, has earned a place in football history way beyond the Liverpool borders. It was England’s first purpose-built football stadium and staged more top-flight matches than any other.
The Old Lady was the first stadium to include four sides with two-tier stands, the first with a three-tier stand, the first with undersoil heating and dugouts and the first where match programmes were sold to spectators.
The Grand Old Lady was the first club ground to stage an FA Cup Final and hosted 1966 World Cup matches, including Pele’s Brazil and Eusebio’s Portugal. American baseball and a world boxing bill were also held there, and there were two visits from a reigning monarch.
The ground also starred in a Rocky movie, staged countless 21st birthday and wedding celebrations, and hundreds of Evertonians had their ashes scattered there.
Yes, the Old Lady with a church in one corner and architect Archibald Leitch’s trademark criss-cross designs on the stands established an impressive CV. Everyone who visited has a powerful memory.
Many Evertonians would plump for the Bayern Munich match in April 1985 as their favourite memory of the great ground. Indeed, the club’s official memorial publication “Farewell to Goodison” includes a chapter on this game entitled “The Greatest Night.”
That would certainly capture my vote as the greatest Goodison game I witnessed. But perhaps my most enduring memory of Goodison concerns events off the pitch.
I’d gone to cover a Mersey derby on March 1, 1980 and hadn’t settled into my press box seat long when I became aware of colleagues stirring, talking and being generally distracted from the match.
Eventually, word leaked that Everton’s greatest player, Dixie Dean, had been taken seriously ill while watching the match. My editor in London told me to forget the match, establish what had happened to Dixie and let them have as much copy as possible on the great man.
Leaving the press box, I found myself wandering in the bowels of Goodison searching for someone who could explain what had happened.
There was no one. Corridors were deserted, the silence broken only by muffled shouts from the now distant crowd. Turning a corner, I came across a trolley with a body on it covered mostly by a shroud.
The top had been peeled back revealing the face. Dixie. Oh blimey. The greatest goalscorer in top-flight English football lay there in splendid isolation. Completely alone.
Recovering from my shock, I darted back to the press box and started dictating thousands of words down the telephone (no laptops in those days). You don’t easily forget an experience like that.
Both the Bayern match and Dixie’s derby passing are the subject of chapters in “Farewell to Goodison”, a treasure trove of 100 recollections assembled and superbly written by Everton press attache David Prentice.
Essential for Evertonians. Entertaining for others.
Farewell to Goodison, an official Everton publication, is published by Reach Sport, price £20.
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