We lost a true Evertonian last week. One who, unfortunately for him in a way, though I'm sure he wouldn't have had it any differently, was wealthy enough to put together a consortium to buy the club he's supported all his life when it looked rudderless. And to bring it stability and relative success, albeit not trophies. But one who was not mega wealthy and realised he didn't have the wherewithal to compete with Roman Abramovich let alone the sovereign wealth funds who would follow as owners of Premier League clubs. One who looked tirelessly for a suitable, wealthier owner to take the club forward. He was thwarted in that aim for many years by the millstone of the need to fund a new stadium. Why else would Sheik Mansour have bought Manchester City?
After all, when the Abu Dhabi Doos bought into City in 2008 they had just finished 9th in the premier league having finished 14th the previous year. Everton had finished 5th and 6th in those two years. But City were no longer at Maine Road having been gifted a stadium.
Kenwright eventually found his wealthy buyer, the enthusiastic (for quite a while) Farhad Moshiri who was prepared to make the new stadium happen and spend a lot of money on the team. It's hardly Kenwright's fault that the managers Moshiri put in place - a lot of them! - wasted that money, though an unfortunately large proportion of Everton fans - or at least the noisy ones on social media - seem to think it was his fault.
It's also not his fault that Moshiri's backer of last resort, the super wealthy Alisher Usmanov, became persona non grata because Putin invaded Ukraine, so Moshiri's appetite to keep funding a project in trouble ran out.
I hope those fans who turned on Kenwright have read the many fond recollections of him from former and current players and managers who knew him as a polite, enthusiastic and supportive chairman who didn't interfere but always encouraged and was concerned for the well being of all the club's employees. And who championed the largest and best community programme of any club in the Premier League (and quite possibly the world).
I met Bill once. Well actually I didn't but he spoke to me. One of my most loyal readers of this blog believes I can recall every detail of every match I've ever been to, which of course I can't. Far from it, especially the more recent ones! But I remember the day Bill spoke to me very clearly and it tells you a lot about the man.
It was on the 28th of December 1997. And no I didn't remember that, I had to look it up. The reason I remember is that it turned out to be the day that Duncan Ferguson scored the first ever hat trick of headers in the Premier League and me and my older son were there. Though we missed the first goal.
At that time we lived in Oxfordshire and so, having seen around half the home matches in some seasons earlier in the 90s, we only got to see the odd game. For this one we would have been staying with family for Christmas and/or New Year. We hadn't realised that access to the ground had become all ticket (yes, you really could just rock up and pay cash at the turnstiles until the season before).
So when we arrived we found we had to join a large queue at the box office in Goodison Road to buy tickets, by which time the game had started. The game had been going a while when we got to the front of the queue. Having got our tickets we walked briskly along Goodison Road and, just as we were coming to the end of the Main Stand, there was an enormous roar as Ferguson scored his first. At which point we ran around to the Gwladys Street turnstiles (why? we weren't going to catch a replay!). The suddenness of that colossal din - if you're in the ground you realise it's about to happen, so it took us by surprise - is why I remember the day so clearly. The game ended 3-2 and I remember nothing more about it.
Except what happened while we were standing in the queue, at a point where it snaked along the pavement close to the main entrance, with it's uniformed commissionaire. (Do they still have that? Perhaps I'll look when I go to today's match). I was, as usual, in full flow bending my then teenage sons's ear about something and nothing - probably something about his boys' team that I coached - when a quiet voice to our side gently said "excuse me, can I pass through, please?"
I stood aside and a white haired chap, who had been waiting patiently, said "thank you" and walked past making his way towards the main entrance. I turned back to my son and was about to resume my exposition on whatever, when I glanced at the chap's back and said to my son "that's Bill Kenwright. What a nice, polite man". (If the roles had been reveresed I'd have probably walked up without slowing down much, said "excuse me, mate" and pushed through).
At that point Bill was on the board of directors and a minor shareholder. By that time Kenwright was also a very successful theatre producer and director (I'm sure we'd all been to see the fabulous Blood Brothers as a family by then). Even when Kenwright's consortium acquired the club in 1999 there was infighting, in particular with Paul Gregg, another theatre impressario, which thwarted plans to build a stadium at King's Dock right in the centre of the Liverpool waterfront. The project failed in 2003 because the club could not come up with £30m to secure the site. Gregg subsequently sold his shares to an American businessman and it was another year before Kenwright became the club's major shareholder (some sources say Philip Green bunged him the money for it). He became chairman in July 2004.
By 2005 he was looking for investment into the club and always made clear he would stand aside if a suitable buyer could be found. It took more than a decade before Moshiri turned up. Many fans subscribe to the view that Kenwright thwarted attempts to buy the cub off him; he always insisted the money had never actually been there (as Moshiri may now be finding out).
As you can tell I was a Kenwright admirer. I'm disappointed the club has got into difficulties again in recent years and, as Chairman, he obviously has some responsibility. But until Moshiri came along the club was well and cautiously run. One statistic tells it all really - the number of managers they appointed. From the day Kenwright's consortium became the majority shareholder in 1999 to the day he sold to Moshiri in 2016 Everton had 3 managers: Walter Smith was already in place, Kenwright switched him for David Moyes and then, when Moyes left, he appointed Roberto Martinez. So Kenwright appointed 2 managers in 16 years. Moshiri has appointed 7 in 9 years, excluding interim appointments. Kenwright may have been chairman through that time but we know that it was Moshiri interviewing candidate managers, sometimes on Usmanov's yacht apparently.
There was a fitting tribute for Kenwright before the kick off of the cup tie with Burnley on 1 November and I believe that showed the silent majority of Evertonians share my view of him. The photo above comes from the cover of the tribute edition of the programme for that match.
One other photo shows the touch of the theatre impressario. It's from the tribute at Goodison in September 2012 for the Hillsborough victims a few days after publication of the independent panel's report which confirmed that there had been a cover up shifting the blame from the police to the victims*
The two mascots (for a game between Everton and Newcastle United) took the field to a song carefully chosen by Bill: the Hollies "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother". The symbolism was perfect: Liverpool FC is effectively Everton FC's younger brother. There had been speculation that Everton would play the Liverpool anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone". But Bill was much cleverer than that. A year later he got a standing ovation at the annual Hillsborough memorial service at Anfield, saying "you picked on the wrong city - and you picked on the wrong mums".
A class act was Bill. Farewell and thanks for the journey.
* I would say the FA was also significantly to blame, giving the fateful semi-final to Hillsborough. The ground did not have a valid safety certificate at the time and there had been problems at another semi-final in the recent past. And they gave the team with the larger number of supporters the smaller end of the ground. It was all inviting trouble. I have no idea why the FA has got off so lightly in retrospectives of the disaster
Sources include
Wikipedia (of course)
Bill Kenwright was so generous, Hillsborough campaigner says. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-67217127 25 October 2023
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