Blues ça Change…

I will never buy one of ToffeeArt’s my first match celebrations. Not because I have anything against the product, of course. His cufflinks are my goto accessory for weddings, interviews and funerals alike. But still, I won’t be buying a first match print because I can’t remember what or when my first match was. It would have been at Goodison, of course. But beyond that, it’s all just a vague, blue blur. And there is your first clue as to the sort of fan I am. The sort of fan who can’t remember their first match, who has definitely never had a season ticket, and who is in no danger of passing their Everton history GCSE.

I’m a blue because I come from a blue family. Obviously, growing up in Liverpool, you can’t be untouched by football. But it just wasn’t central to my family. On top of that, I was always, as I believe the modern coaching manuals have it, ‘piss poor’ at togger. All in all, it was no great surprise that football was just another one of the many things that fell by the wayside when I took moving away from home as an opportunity to reinvent myself.

We’re all busy people, so I’m going to bleep over the details of my route back to football. Let’s just say I come from a blue family. And family are important to me.

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I remember I went to a game at Bournemouth in one of the last pre-Covid seasons, around the end of the Koeman era. Another game attended because of the good offices of @EvertonSpares. I’ve had a supporter’s account for years, but resigned myself long ago to never having enough match credits. But back to that Bournemouth game (if we must, because it was dreadful). Early on, the gloom of the tiny away stand was punctuated by an especially loud, especially despairing shout and I looked round to see who it was and realised that I was a just few seats away from David Fehily (late of this parish). Now, we don’t know each other from adam IRL, but I recognised him from those short, final whistle, tactical summary videos he used to do for this site. Something about seeing someone I was more used to seeing on Goodison Rd (even if only on video) down on the south coast, brought home to me (not for the first time) just how much effort that always full away end put in. Just how much time and money is spent getting there; just how much passion is invested into this club.

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In the name of Howard Kendall

And of Brian Labone

And of the Holy Trinity

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A little while back, years back probably, I saw a picture in a post on this site. I think it may have been from Ed, who writes the Dixties60 blog, but I can’t find it now. As I remember it, the picture had been taken during a game, from the Gwladys looking towards the Bullens. And there was a little red circle showing where their dad used to sit. I think about that picture a fair bit.

It seems to me that there are layers of history in a Goodison crowd. Layers of history laid down game by game like a tree lays down its annual growth rings. People know their neighbours, know them for a season, or for years. And any time you look out at a Goodison crowd, you are looking at just the top layer of a complex set of interconnections. People knowing where there dad sat and looking across at it. Where there mum, brother, sister, grandma, grandad, or their friends are, and were.

The links between people at any one game, and between all the people at all the different games, would be like the craziest 4D, conspiracy theory, red string chart ever. Thousands and thousands of games adding layer upon layer to gradually build this complex, organic, living mesh of relationships, friendships and, I guess, enmities. A mesh connecting all the layers, all the seasons, all the games. So many Evertonians. Links stretching back over generations to far larger crowds, stood in a stadium hardly recognisable. But still the same crowd, the same tribe, the same community, the same congregation of the church of Everton.

I’m probably not the first tedious language pedant to point out to you that ‘church’ can also mean the group of people with similar beliefs, as well as the building they worship in. Whenever two or three of us are gathered together, we will all be there. The Church of Everton.

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In the name of Tommy Lawton

And of Alex Young

And of William R Dean

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So yeah. The ground move. We may finally be at the stage where I can contemplate typing that into a post without thinking I’m going to jinx the whole thing into some sort of Bramley Moorebella. A blue tribute to forever unfinished waterfront property developments. I’m only just at that point, mind…

But. The ground move…..

How are you with change? Me, I’m OK, I guess. I used to travel a lot for work so I reckon I’m a little more tolerant than most of things not always being the same. But still, I know I can get nostalgic for something before its even gone. When my kids were growing up, I felt a little sad as they went through the stages at the same time as I celebrated them growing up. Sad that the toddler would never be that fat limbed baby from a few weeks back. Sad that the tiny schoolkid dwarfed by their backpack would never be the toddler from a few months back. You get the picture.

Contrariwise, I’ve moved house a lot, and I’ve never been one for an operatic three act farewell to a location. I am much more a ‘head off without a backward glance’ kind of guy. There’s a song by Jeffrey and Jack Lewis called ‘Moving’. It has the lines “then you take one last walk out the door || and you’ll never again see the angle || of the street you saw from that window”. Me, I can definitely savour the minutiae of things ending, but I still head straight out the door. I dunno. Does the stadium move mean more to me than moving house?

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And yes, of course, the blow of leaving will be cushioned a little by the fact that the new place is going to be an absolute belter. In the not too distant future, you’ll be looking out over a river illuminated by a setting sun, while you stand in line for your Snack-0-Matic™ half-time cheese on toast. And it will seem as normal and everyday as seeing an extra post in a penalty area.

Scratch the setting sun bit if you’d rather eat your imaginary cheese on toast at a Champions League game.

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In the name of the Park End

And of the Street

The Main and the Bullens too

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Not too hard to see why I’ve been thinking about that picture. A picture of a link across a stadium that is already well into its last lap. When I first started trying to write about how I saw that tangle of links across Goodison, what it meant to me, I described it as a web of interconnections. But that is a very tired metaphor, any meaning hammered out of it by endless overuse in the last 30 years.

Not that I’m going to diss the power of the interwebs while in the very act of grabbing a slot on Dan’s fine website. A site that does real good as well as witnessing some, frankly, incredible feats of endurance. As you can see from the links I’ve sprinkled through this piece, I know as well as any how the web lets communities flourish in ways they never could before. But for all that, when the time comes for you to say your own goodbye to the Old Lady that one, last time, your hand might just linger on the rail, on the balcony edge, rather longer than it has to, mightn’t it? At that point when you know that you’ll never see that angle of the stadium from that seat again?

However good the internet is, real life… well, real life just has a certain heft to it, don’t you find?

What’s that song? It’s not the leaving….

It’s not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me

But the leaving of you, old blues….

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Maybe a better image for that mad riot of stadium links would be the knotted jumble of roots you see when you pull a healthy plant out of a too small pot. You see all the roots bunched together, branching out from each other, close together, tangled and interweaving. I like that much better as an image. Roots feed and sustain each other. Multilayered. Old and new together. Separate, but all there for each other. And all there for the same larger purpose.

And when you look across the ground at the new place, I am sure you will still be able to see the memories of our church. Your mum, your dad, your brother, your sister, your nan or your grandad. Your mate or that bloke who really, really wazzed you off. They will still all be there, if only we care to see.

I am absolutely sure that when we are pulled out of the Goodison pot, we will still be Everton. Of course we will. Obviously we will. How could we not be? It’s not in doubt is it? Whenever two or three of us are gathered together, we are all there. The Church of Everton.

Business people may come and go. And they will. But we will endure. As we have done before. As we do today. And as we always shall do, tomorrow and tomorrow, amen.

Together Blues. Together.

Peace be with you.

Vaya con Kendall.