It's all been said, hasn't it? There is nothing more to learn about the life of Dixie Dean. There have been several books, and any gaps they may have left have surely been filled by the army of diligent chroniclers of the past among the club's fanbase.
But in fact, there ARE still new tales to tell. I've been fortunate enough to stumble across one of them. And it is truly remarkable.
What's In A Name?
Let's start with a thought experiment. Imagine that Dixie had an uncle called Ralph Dean, his father's brother. Imagine that he too was a footballer, good enough to play professionally. Imagine that, like Dixie, he was a centre-forward, and had actually played at Goodison Park in the First Division.
If this story were true, it would be a central part of the Dixie narrative. 'It's in the genes', people would say. 'Just look at his uncle'.
Well in fact, the story IS true. In all facets but one.
Ralph really existed, but he was the brother of Dixie's
mother, not his father. His surname was not Dean, but Brett, the maiden name of Sarah, who gave birth to William Dean on January 22nd 1907.
Ralph had a younger brother. He too played the game at the top level. Yes, Dixie had TWO uncles who played professional football - Ralph Brett and Samuel Brett.
That difference in surnames is surely the only reason why their story is not well-known, though it really shouldn't make any difference. No-one would claim that blood ties are any weaker on the mother's side. And 'not well-known' is actually an understatement. I wouldn't be surprised if even the most obsessive Everton connoisseurs were unaware of Ralph and Samuel. Their existence is not mentioned in either of the two Dixie biographies (by Nick Walsh and John Keith), and if you put their names in the search engine on this forum you get no results. You can try googling 'Dixie Dean's uncle' too but you will just draw a blank.
It's time to put that right.
Saturday October 22nd 1898
Everton v West Bromwich Albion, Football League Division One
This was such an historic day that we need to look at it in some detail, starting with the background to the game.
For Dick Molyneux, it was a worrying time. The Everton secretary had played a key role in the switch to Goodison Park, and then in the transformation of the ground into the finest football arena in England. But the fans now expected a team to match. Despite a huge outlay on new players in recent seasons, no trophy had been won since the League title, when the club was still based at Anfield.
Now there was a new club in the city, and the previous season, those upstarts across Stanley Park had finished above Everton for the first time. In the first derby match of the current season, on September 24th, Liverpool had come away from Goodison with a 2-1 victory, their first win on the ground. Not a good day. And it wasn't only events on the pitch that had Dick Molyneux worried.
Arriving at the game that day to find the Main Stand full and the gates locked, Everton fan James Lynch had climbed a hoarding in Goodison Road for a free view. But early in the game, he lost his balance and fell to the ground, suffering fatal injuries. On October 7th, Molyneux had to give evidence at the coroner's inquest, and was asked why the club hadn't put spikes on the hoardings to stop fans climbing up. "We've tried it", he replied, "but people just bring sacks and put them on top".
Two weeks later on October 22nd, with West Brom the visitors to Goodison , Everton were lying fifth in the table. These were the line-ups. You can see there is another Molyneux in the Everton team, full back George (no relation), who would later play for England:
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Everton won the toss and had the choice of ends, so the visitors kicked off. The man who got the ball rolling was Albion centre forward - Ralph Brett.
In April 1964, Dixie Dean would kick off from that centre spot in his testimonial match, before leaving the pitch to a rapturous ovation. That was his last kick on the hallowed turf. His family's Goodison story, though, began at that moment sixty six years earlier, when his uncle, in the stripes of West Brom, set the game in motion.
As Ralph was playing at Goodison, on the other side of the Mersey in Laird Street, Birkenhead, his sister Sarah was taking care of her young daughters. Married in 1892 to William Dean, she would give birth to five girls before finally, in 1907, a boy arrived, He would be named after his father.
The Everton game was only Ralph's eighth senior appearance, having joined Albion at the start of the season. On the opening day he made his League debut, scoring in a 3-3 draw at Bolton Wanderers. That same afternoon, brother Sammy made his first start for Albion reserves, also at centre forward, against Bristol St George at the Stoney Lane ground (Albion moved to the Hawthorns at the end of this season).
Ralph scored again the following week in a 1-1 draw at home to Preston, but that was followed by five games without finding the net. He arrived at Everton hoping to break his barren spell.
The Birmingham Daily Gazette's reporter at Goodison told us that Ralph 'had a few fine efforts, but he ought certainly to have scored when he headed over from Bassett's centre'. That wasn't Albion's only good chance. They hit the woodwork three times, but the only goal of the game was scored at the other end by Wilfred Oldham, and Everton came away with a fortunate victory.
There is no photographic record of Ralph Brett playing at Goodison that day, unless by some miracle there is something hidden away in the archives. And obviously there are no moving pictures.
But across Lancashire that same evening, a unique event was taking place. At the Exchange Hall in Blackburn, the Silvograph Animated Picture Company was using the latest cinematic technology to show action from a game at Ewood Park, taken a month earlier on September 24th - the same day as the Everton v Liverpool match mentioned above.
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Arthur Cheetham, a Welsh film maker, had set up his camera at Ewood Park and recorded several short sequences of play. Many decades later, his grandson would donate the surviving section to the North West Film Archive, and it is now recognized as the oldest piece of football footage in existence.
We can see it now for ourselves:
Rovers won the game 4-1. Along with the result from Goodison, it meant they leapfrogged Everton at the top of the League.
No doubt you've already twigged, but the West Brom centre forward that day was Ralph Brett, playing just his fourth game in senior football.
Is it possible to identify him? With such grainy footage, it's not easy. But let's have a go.
All the surviving action seems to take place in the first half, with the camera behind the Darwen End. Those terraced houses behind the far goal are on Kidder Street:
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Look at the keeper at this end. It's clear from the striped jersey that he's the visiting keeper - Albion legend Joe Reader. Back then keepers would often wear the same jersey as outfield players. And it's just about possible if you look closely to tell which of those outfield players are wearing Albion stripes and which are in Rovers' halved jerseys.
If Ralph Brett had been a winger it would have been far more difficult (with the camera covering just a strip down the middle), but being a centre forward in an era when players stuck fairly rigidly to their positions, it's possible to make an educated guess.
I reckon this is our man:
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As far as I know, the earliest footage of Dixie Dean in an Everton shirt is from the early 1930s. There is nothing, for example, from the record breaking 1927/28 season. But here, three decades earlier, is Uncle Ralph making his own piece of history, starring in the oldest football film in existence.
What Came Next
Three weeks after playing at Goodison, Ralph played against Everton again in the return game at Stoney Lane. A point would have taken Everton back to the top that day, but Albion won 3-0, with Ralph getting the third goal. He'd made a promising start to his career at West Brom, but it was to be over all too soon.
He played his last game for them on March 18th, having to leave the field after just two minutes when 'his knees gave way'. Later that week came a report in the Birmingham Mail that he and three other players had been suspended sine die for 'repeatedly breaching training regulations'. That's usually a reference to heavy intake of alcohol. He had played just twelve games, scoring three goals (the last being that one against Everton).
Later that season, brother Sammy stepped up to the first team, though he would play ever fewer games than Ralph before moving to non-League Wellingborough Town.
That seemed to mark the end of the Brett brothers in senior football. There is, however, a fascinating post script.
I Know What It's Like
Everton still hadn't won another trophy when Dick Molyneux left under a cloud in 1901. The board no longer had confidence that he could perform his secretarial duties properly, and it seems that alcohol abuse was the reason for their concern. A sad end for one of the key figures in the club's history.
But Dick wasn't finished with football, and two years later he would turn up in London.
In 1902/03, Brentford fans witnessed what must be a candidate for the worst ever season in professional football in England. In 30 matches, they won two, drew one and lost 27. But fortunately for them, there was no automatic relegation. They could retain their place in Southern League Division One if they won a play-off against Fulham, champions of Division Two that season.
Brentford suddenly turned it on and thrashed Fulham 7-2.
After the game, the directors met and decided to appoint a new manager - Dick Molyneux. The man whose job he took, William Lewis, acknowledged that 'Mr. Molyneux has forgotten more about football than I ever knew'.
Brentford were an ambitious club with good financial backing, and Dick was trusted to transform the club's fortunes. One of his first moves was to change their strip to match the racing colours of Walter Rothschild, a patron of the club:
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Rothschild was a prominent Zionist, and the famous Balfour declaration of 1917, promising Jewish people a homeland in Palestine, was actually made in a letter to him from Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary.
Dick Molyneux then turned his attention to the men who'd be wearing those jerseys. He used his long years of experience to recommend a whole new squad of players. One he remembered was a centre forward he had seen at Goodison Park five years earlier called Ralph Brett.
Was Dick aware of the circumstances of Ralph's dismissal at West Brom? If so, did his own battle with alcohol make him look upon Brett's story more sympathetically? We don't know, but come the start of the season, Ralph Brett was turning out in those Brentford colours.
It seems that brother Sammy joined him again in West London, though details are sketchy, and it's unclear whether the younger Brett made an appearance for the Bees.
We never saw the Brett brothers at the top level again, and by the time William Dean was born in 1907, their names had disappeared from the sports pages, only ever to reappear as very brief mentions in the Liverpool papers in footnotes to stories about Dixie.
I'll hope you agree, though, that despite having only had a brief spell in the limelight, they shouldn't be forgotten when we tell the story of Everton's greatest player.
This is a long enough story already, so although there is more to say, I'll leave it for later. Watch this space. And if anyone has any more information on Ralph and Sammy, I'd love to hear it.
By the way, I know 'Richard Molyneux' was known by the shortened version beginning with D, but when I used that it was corrected by the forum to 'poor language'!
