The sad news of Howard Kendall’s death broke on Saturday morning and since then the media has quite rightly been full of articles and interviews on Everton’s greatest ever manager.
For those of a certain age, we have been able to reminisce about one of the best football teams ever assembled.
Such is the nature of life that if you ask me what I did last week I would struggle to remember, but ask me to reel off a team from the mid-80s when I was 11 or 12 years old (the peak years for a male sporting memory) and I would have no trouble at all.
The West Indies team who toured in 1984? No problem – Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Lloyd, Richards, Dujon, Baptiste, Marshall, Harper, Holding, Garner.
The dominant Everton team of 84/85? Here you go – Southall, Stevens, Ratcliffe, Mountfield, Van Den Hauwe, Steven, Reid, Bracewell, Sheedy, Sharp, Gray (Heath) Sub: Harper. Actually I have no idea whether Alan Harper was substitute for all that season, but it felt that way.
The kits of that era are fresh in the mind as well. Everton’s blue shirt in 1984, with a big white V around the neck, made by Le Coq Sportif and with HAFNIA across the middle, gave way to the Lineker-worn 1/3 white, 2/3 blue with NEC replacing the previous sponsors.
There is Sharp’s goal against Liverpool, Gray’s diving headers against Sunderland and numerous strikes from Sheedy’s left foot or saves from Big Nev.
The 80s were an era of Merseyside dominance, which wasn’t particularly palatable when you come from the city at the other end of the East Lancs road.
But it was more preferable for Everton to be successful rather than Liverpool, although I didn’t necessarily feel that way when I was on a school camp on an October weekend in 1984 and news came through (it came through in those days rather than popping up on a phone) that Everton had thrashed Manchester United 5-0 at Goodison.
Just when I thought that a grim experience in a wet and cold field full of cow pats couldn’t have got any worse, it did!
Through the December and January of that season, Everton won nine on the trot in all competitions, and come April they were still on for three trophies – the league, the FA Cup and the Cup Winners Cup.
We live now in an era of 25-man squads, rotations, red zones, a disregard for some cup competitions, complaints of playing on a Thursday (or if you are in the Champions League playing Wednesday and then Saturday lunchtime). Maybe there were complaints from Everton in 1985 but if there were I don’t remember them.
Why would there have been complaints? Well, take a look at their fixture list. On April 24th they knocked Bayern Munich out of the Cup Winners Cup at the semi-final stage and then three days later beat Norwich in the league. The title was within their grasp as they went into May.
They then played four league games in seven days. FOUR! Wenger, Mourinho, Van Gaal etc would self-combust in the same circumstances. They played on the 4th, 6th, 8th and 11th May. They won three out of the four, clinching the title against QPR on the 6th.
They won the Cup Winners Cup in Rotterdam on the 15th before the FA Cup Final on the 18th. That game went into extra time as they lost to one of the iconic Wembley goals from Norman Whiteside.
They had three more league games on the 23rd, 26th, 28th of the month and Kendall did ‘rest’ a few in those with the title won. In total they played nine games in May and when the trophies were on the line it was six games in just 14 days.
While you might argue that the game is faster now and players have to be fitter, you were more likely to get booted up in the air back then and expected to play through the knocks – and there weren’t three substitutes to help rest tired legs.
If you think I am looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses then I am and I make no apologies for that at all. One of the beautiful things about sport is that it respects history.
One of the duties of sportsmen and women is to help young people fall in love with their sport because without the next generation, sport will have no future.
I am not an Evertonian and I can’t love that club in the way that I love my own but they were a big part of my love affair with football. That team under that manager gave a young boy plenty of memories that live on to this very day.
I am grateful for that. I am grateful to the players and I am grateful to the late, great Howard Kendall.
