A history lesson for a golfer

 I noted in my post "Safe for Now" (25 May) that a young Liverpool fan had said with a smirk "you lot were celebrating just because you didn't get chucked out" a few days after Everton's crucial come from behind 3-2 win against Crystal Palace. But that wasn't the only conversation I had with a Liverpool fan at golf last month and the other one almost left me speechless (but being me, not quite).

That chat happened in a match with another club. One of our opponents was an ex-professional footballer who had played for Brentford, amongst other clubs. This was few days after Everton had lost at home to Brentford in a match that could have ensured safety had they won, so naturally we chatted quite a bit about football. His colleague was from the Wirral and so inevitably, after we'd played a few holes, I asked "are you a red or a blue?" As usual these days the answer was "red". But this was followed by "to be honest, I've never understood why anyone would support Everton or Manchester City. Why would you support the smaller club in your area?"

I thought I was the master of the ignorant, ridiculous and thoughtlessly hurtful statement but, wow, this took the biscuit!

I didn't respond while we prepared for our next shots (indeed I didn't know how to respond initially) but after we'd hit in a similar direction along the fairway with a fairly long walk to come I gently asked "how old are you, Jeff?" I had guessed the answer would be a very similar age to me and he was indeed just one year older, paving the way for a short history lesson.

Which went broadly as follows. "So we're the same age and were at school in the 50s and 60s. When I started supporting Everton aged 7 or 8, Liverpool were in the old second division, what is now the Championship. And they were there for a few more years before getting promoted*. At the time Everton were considered the bigger club, known as the Merseyside Millionaires, setting a British transfer record buying Alan Ball in 1966. They had the best football ground outside Wembley and hosted the world cup semi final at Goodison, also in 1966. Everton and Liverpool both won the league twice and the FA Cup once while I was at school. Indeed that was the first time in Liverpool's history they had ever won the FA Cup. So the idea that Liverpool are the bigger club came much later".

His reply actually did leave me speechless: "I don't suppose I followed it that closely at the time".

Now I know a lot of passionate and knowledgeable reds but, golly, Liverpool have more than their share of dilettante** supporters. I bit my tongue rather than mutter "typical Liverpool supporter" and we returned to playing golf.

But equally I could have just said what's wrong with supporting one of your local clubs, be it Everton or Tranmere? Tranmere would actually have been his local football league club, but his family were all reds and that's fine too of course.

We all know that some people pick a club to support based on their success at the time, but that isn't the reason most dedicated fans support their team. A lot of City fans have appeared out of the woodwork in recent years but I don't doubt that most of them are long term supporters, most of whom are relishing their current success after many fallow years and in expectation that it won't last forever, as one of them said to me last night.

Though in the modern game it's hard to see anyone gate crashing the big time without colossal financial backing, Leicester's unlikely Premier League win notwithstanding. So City are only likely to be eclipsed by another team from the current elite, until or unless Saudi money propels Newcastle United into contention. That wasn't always the way: the ball is round and it was meant to go round, as George Best once said. And it did.

Continuing on the theme of how things were in the 60s, let's go back to 1963, when I started grammar school. There was of course only the old first division and the FA Cup in those days. Playing in Europe was a novelty and didn't affect a team's status. Everton had just won the league, but had last done so in 1939. (Typical of Everton's fate to have a good team when war broke out...) Liverpool had done well in their first season back in the top division in nine seasons and would go on to win it the following season for the first time since 1947. The glamour team was Spurs, who had done the League/F A Cup double three years earlier. This was a huge novelty: while it's been done seven times in the last 30 years, before that it had only been done 5 times and the previous club to do it before Spurs in 1961 was Aston Villa in 1897.

The other teams that commanded a lot of attention were Manchester United, partly on account of the Busby Babes and the Munich air tragedy, which happened when I was too young to appreciate it. Indeed its significance only dawned gradually on me as Bobby Charlton became a World and European Cup winner later in the 60s. But even with that historic team United only won the league twice and the cup once in the 60s - exactly the same as Everton and Liverpool. In that time the much vaunted Leeds team won one league and one F A Cup. 

Teams could dominate for short period. Wolves were fading by 1963 but they had won the league three times in the 50s and the FA Cup as recently as 1960.

Any schoolboy looking up which team had won the most trophies would find it was Aston Villa, who hadn't won a thing in donkey's years at that point. Arsenal had won the league the most times (7, but not in the previous ten years). Along with Everton on 6 were Villa, who hadn't won it since 1910 and Sunderland, who hadn't won it since 1936. It was absolutely normal for a team to go three decades between winning trophies, but to still have a chance of doing so***.  For the benefit of folks like Jeff, this was the tally of English trophies in 1963, when he would have been 12 years old:

The Football Trophy Table in 1963
	League	FA Cup	Total	Comments
Aston Villa	6	7	13	11 of the trophies before 1920
Arsenal	7	3	10	5 of the league wins in the 1930s
Everton	6	2	8
Manchester United	5	3	8
Wolves	3	4	7	4 trophies in the 1950s
Sunderland	6	0	6	Last trophy in 1936
Spurs	2	4	6
Liverpool	5	0	5

Oh Manchester City? 1 league and 3 cup wins. Chelsea? One solitary league title win, in 1955.

What this shows is that it was quite normal for teams to have a brief run of success and then go a long time before winning again. The trophies were shared around: ten different winners of the league in the thirteen seasons from 1959-60 to 1971-72 for example and eleven different FA Cup winners in the same period. Of course there was an elite, but it was very broad and open to be joined. Fans of a dozen or more clubs would go into any season with realistic hopes of contending for a trophy. In that period Ipswich Town, Burnley and Derby County all won the league once.

Now I didn't choose to support Everton because of what they'd won, or their history. They were one of the two most local Football League teams (the most local to where I lived, actually, more than half a mile nearer than Liverpool) and I was influenced by a friend whose family supported Everton. 

But, whatever you do, don't try to tell me that Liverpool were always the bigger club, especially when you "weren't following it that closely"!

* Liverpool were promoted in 1962 but, according to the website City Explorer Liverpool, they got promoted in 1964, when they actually won the league title. Liverpool fans really don't get facts or history! https://lfccityexplorer.co.uk/liverpool-fc-history/

** I was pleased with this choice of word (people who cultivate an area of interest without real commitment or knowledge). My first choice was "knobhead"

*** Indeed even in the modern "premier league" era Liverpool went thirty years from 1990 to 2020 without winning the league; not that you'd think so to listen to the "big club" brigade. They've only won the Premier League once, Jeff!