EXCLUSIVE Everton's legendary former player and manager Joe Royle takes an emotional tour of Goodison Park before Toffees finally leave the famous old ground

Daily Mail​

10-05-2025

There are few remaining who hold as many memories here as Joe Royle. Grand Old Tales to be told of the Grand Old Lady. So, as we visit a Goodison Park nearing its end, let's start at the start - and a long voyage embarked upon via the help of a sailor.
'Tommy Stewart lived on our street and he was a tugboat captain,' the man himself explains of his first visit. 'His two sons were my best mates and my dad was an engineer but he was also a musician who played the clubs all weekend. He couldn't bring me so Tommy did. We all got the 17D bus from Norris Green.'
It was under Tommy's astute guidance, and long before Royle's debut, that his eye for goalmouth opportunity developed just yards away from where we currently sit.
'We started on the paddock over there,' Royle, now 76, recalls, pointing over to the Bullens. 'I was seven or eight. But every now and then we'd come behind the goal here at the Park End. For some reason the crowd used to throw coins into the net. Tommy would lift me up and throw me over the wall to pick them up. Wonderful times.'
Plenty more would follow and, as one of English football's great cathedrals prepares for final prayers, Royle is here with Mail Sport to reflect.
On a glorious Spring morning time seems to stand still. Archibald Leitch's blue, cross-braced panels dominate a perfect picture as they have for 99 years, robbed of a century by the imminent move to futuristic Bramley-Moore Dock.
This iconic landmark, with its fluctuating tiers and church still visible in the corner, sits in an almost-contemplative silence, save for the gentle hum of the groundsman's mower beneath us.
Royle continues. 'I instantly loved the place. I went to a school down the East Lancs Road where the headmaster was also an Evertonian. I ended up as head boy and he used to put me on a bus and send me to pick up free tickets for reserve games. I loved the coming and having a look around when it was empty.'
After rejecting Manchester United to sign as an apprentice, a job that would include cleaning the dressing rooms for the likes of Eusebio and Pele at the 1966 World Cup, he would soon see it full.
'I was in the boot room under the main stand on a Friday afternoon when Gordon Watson, one of the coaches, told me the manager, Harry Catterick, wanted to see me. I was wearing the overalls we had to put on while we were polishing and headed up in the lift wondering what I'd done wrong. When I got to his office he told me he had my dad on the phone and that he was just telling him if the weather didn't worsen I was in the team for the next day.'
Making his debut on an ice rink at Blackpool at the age of 16, Royle became Everton's youngest player, a record that would stand for 40 years. His first goal would be here, against Chelsea, and would feature more profiteering at the Park End.
'I thundered one in from all of about seven inches,' he recalls with a smile. 'You don't forget that. As Mike Channon always said it was a feeling you can't scratch. I was only a kid but for an Evertonian to score for Everton in front of these fans, it was terrific. Terrific.'
Many more goals would follow. Many more trophies and many more golden Goodison moments. Like cruising to the First Division Championship in 1970 and scoring 23 times in the process. The party started in the dressing room. 'There's a picture and there were eight bottles of champagne between 11 of us,' Royle remembers.
He may have left for Manchester City in 1974, but Goodison would never leave him. Indeed, in a fitting twist of fate, Royle's final goal in football would come here – in the colours of Norwich City a year before his retirement.
'My first and last goal here,' he says. 'And it was the strangest thing – I scored and I was applauded. Ken Brown, the Norwich manager said to me: "I can't believe it. You've scored against them and they've applauded you." I said, "Well, I'm a Liverpool boy, an Evertonian. I'm one of them." I didn't celebrate it, mind, I'm not that daft.'
After entering management with Oldham, Royle was a regular visitor for midweek matches in Howard Kendall's glorious 1980s.
'I actually got pick-pocketed in the main stand,' he says with a chuckle. 'Good Scousers, hey? I was queuing up for a pie and all of a sudden this fellow banged into me. Then he disappeared and so did my wallet. Only in Liverpool.'
Not long later came happier memories, when he answered an SOS in 1994 with the team in real danger of dropping outside the top tier for the first time in 40 years. It was not a task without immediate challenge.
'The first game was Liverpool, here, Monday night. I'd given my team talk and the players were in the tunnel. I'm in the dressing room and the physio, Les Helm, tells me Duncan Ferguson, who was starting up front, had been done for drink driving and had spent time in a cell over the weekend.
'He's walking out onto the pitch and this is the first I'm hearing. I was raging. I wasn't raging after the game. Neil "Razor" Ruddock did my job for me. He's hit him hard which was the worst thing you could ever do to Duncan. It's enraged him and he was terrific after that. Terrific. We won 2-0. The noise that night. Wow.'
As he reflected on a job well done back in his office, Royle could have been forgiven for thinking his work for the night was over.
'A steward came in and said: "Joe, do us a favour. Will you go in the Winslow (the pub over the road) and go and see the fans?" 'I said "Why?". He told me they were refusing to go home until I'd been in to see them. So I went in and it was awesome. It must have been midnight when I got there and I was in for a long time. It was a riot.'
Perhaps it is of some solace to those on the blue half of Merseyside that, while the stadium may go, the fanbase most certainly will not.
'I've always maintained that the Goodison crowd have changed results,' Royle explains. 'There's been games when they've got the team going and then there's a late rally here. It's that kind of place. And you know, it's always been I can't remember it ever being empty. Even in the bad times, and we had a few of those, the support was always there. The noise was always there.'
We are sat opposite the Gwladys Street End, Goodison's raucous soul. Royle is well-qualified to comment on its impact.
'When I was old enough I moved to the boys' pen in the far corner,' he says. 'Let's just say it was an education! There were loads of kids, scrambling over the railings and getting up to mischief. It was for rascals, but nice rascals. The Gwladys Street has always been where it all comes from. It's always been the Gwladys Street End.'
His vantage point from 1994 to 1997, a run which saw Everton lift the FA Cup, was the halfway line and featured some different characters. 'They're all junior managers around the dugout aren't they?' he says. 'You know, they are they've all got an opinion, something to tell you, which is great.'
He stops, train of thought shifted, and gazes across his old stomping ground. 'You know, I'm sort of tingling looking around at it. Look at the pitch for God's sake. If you couldn't control it on that, you couldn't control it, could you?'
It's a stupid question, but I ask if he will miss the place. 'A lot,' he responds. 'A hell of a lot. It's going to be strange when it's Saturday and you're not coming to Goodison. Silly things like just coming in. Behind here, the big car park when you get here – it used to be a training pitch. When the big pitch was out of order we'd go out there and get some terrible injuries! I'll even miss seeing that.'
Royle's three sons, Lee, Darren and Mark, who have joined us for the morning, are now speaking to the groundsman next to a rickety old trailer used to collect cuttings you imagine may not be making the switch to the new home. On its side the club's motto: Nil Satis Nisi Optimum (Nothing but the best is good enough) has been carefully hand-painted.
'Don't believe a word they say!' Royle shouts down. 'That's the groundsman, Bob, another Everton character,' he explains. 'He's been here since about 1800.'
Just then, the unmistakable siren that marks the start of Z Cars sounds from the speakers, shattering the silence. A tour of the ground is taking place and the club are recreating the matchday experience for those on it.
'Johnny Todd', Royle says, giving the walkout anthem its original name. I ask how he will feel when he hears that played here for a final time.
'Ah, dear,' he says, taking a breath. 'I never saw Dixie Dean, that was before me, but I'll think of Alex Young and Alex Scott and Jimmy Gabriel and Brian Labone, all those people. Ray Wilson - Ramone Wilson - Alex Parker. You know, all the people I've seen here, Alan Ball, Colin Harvey. Howard Kendall and Fred Pickering as well, Fred Pickering, what a striker he was. There's been so many memories.'
Royle will be here for the Southampton match. 'I always scored against them,' he jokes. 'I got four once and they still gave Alan Ball man-of-the-match! Quite rightly, I must add. I'm not one for souvenirs. I'll just take the memories.'
He is yet to visit the new stadium but is looking forward to doing so. 'It's progress,' he adds. 'If nothing else they need the money to pay the players' wages.'
We make our way over to the impossibly-narrow players' tunnel where Royle happily mingles with those on the tour. Outside, we pause to take his picture under a 50ft mural of himself in blue shirt, white shorts, controlling an orange ball.
'Legend' shouts a man passing on a scooter. Some stop and ask for selfies. There is still time to make more memories.
Before we head off for lunch there is one final question to be asked and perhaps the most obvious one. What does Goodison Park mean to him?