Dave Bond, the manager of iconic Everton pub The Winslow Hotel, has been a supporter of the Merseyside club since his mother dug out an old long-wave radio from the attic of their home in County Clare, Ireland, that broadcast the team’s matches.
His interest in Everton had already been sparked by a book on the team and their great 1920s and 1930s forward Dixie Dean.
“The signal was ever so faint, but as a nine-year-old boy I could pick up commentary of the games,” Bond said. “And that was the start of my love affair with Everton; I had my ear to that radio for a good few years.”
Photo: Reuters
Bond and thousands of other supporters are to bid an emotional farewell on Sunday when Everton host already-relegated Southampton in the club’s final Premier League game ever to be staged at Goodison Park, their home for more than a century.
It will be a day to celebrate the “Grand Old Lady,” but one many fans have been dreading.
“I don’t have time to process the emotions, because it’s everything,” Bond said. “There is no precedent; it’s 133 years of match-day history. The Winslow is six years older than Goodison [across the road] and was trading when the first ball was kicked in 1892 and will be when the last is kicked this Sunday.”
While the men’s side are heading for pastures new, Everton on Tuesday announced that the women’s team would make Goodison their permanent home from next season.
The old park — inaugurated the same day as Glasgow’s Celtic Park when they opened as the world’s first purpose-built soccer stadiums — was a cutting-edge development that set the trend for other English soccer grounds, but it is now something of an anachronism alongside the world’s modern venues.
Everton’s glittering new 52,888-capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock comes with all the bells and whistles, but it is the decades of memories that are virtually worn into the weathered blue seats of Goodison — which shakes during booming goal celebrations — that fans will mourn.
“I can remember my first game like it was yesterday,” said Steven Kelly, a member of The 1878s supporters group. “We played Swindon Town [in 1994]. We won 6-2. I actually thought Everton were going to be the best team in the world.”
“There’s no other ground like it in the country, in my opinion, even in the world,” he added.
Everton fan and poet Jem Joynson-Cox summed up the stadium’s charm in a poem Goodbye Goodison, which she narrated with a thick Scouse accent on The 1878s Facebook page.
“Your stairs, your turnstiles, your slanty ceilings in the loo, your bellowing steels, your floodlights, and obstructed view, are etched with the deepest memories of our time with you,” Joynson-Cox wrote. “Our little old lady, we’re in awe of you. But it’s time to move on to pastures new.”
The stadium has hosted weddings and funeral services, and the ground below the turf is the final resting place for the ashes of about 800 fans. The club ended the practice in 2004 due to limited space.
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