There are few about that have so many memories here as Joe Royle. Grand Old Tales to be told about the great old lady. So, while we visit a goodison park that is approaching the end, let's start at the start – and started a long journey through the help of a sailor.
“Tommy Stewart lived on our street and he was a tugboat captain,” the man himself explains from his first visit. 'His two sons were my best friends and my father was an engineer, but he was also a musician who played the clubs all weekend. He couldn't bring me that Tommy did. We all have the 17d bus from Norris Green. '
It was under the astute guidance of Tommy, and long before the debut of Royle, which was his eye for TargetMouth opportunity on just a few meters away from where we are currently.
“We started with the paddock there,” Royle, now 76, remembers, pointing to the bumens. “I was seven or eight. But every now and then we came behind the goal here at the park end. For some reason, the crowd threw coins into the net. Tommy would lift me and throw me over the wall to pick them up. Wonderful times. '
Much more would follow and, while one of the big cathedrals of English football is preparing for the last prayers, Royle is here with Postsport to think.
On a glorious spring morning it seems to stand still. The blue, cross-fraced panels of Archibald Leitch dominate a perfect image as they have had 99 years old, robbed of a century by the approaching switch to futuristic Bramley-Moore-Dock.
This iconic monument, with its fluctuating layers and the church that are still visible in the corner, is in an almost contact silence, except for the soft buzzing of the mower of the groundman among us.
Royle continues. “I immediately loved the place. I went to a school along the East Lancs Road, where the director was also an Evertonian. I ended up as a main boy and he put me in a bus and sent me to pick up free tickets for spare games. I loved the arrival and a look to look around when it was empty. '
After he had rejected Manchester United to draw as a student, a job that would clean the changing rooms for people like Eusebio and Pele at the 1966 World Cup, he would soon see it full.
'I was in the boat room under the main standard on a Friday afternoon when Gordon Watson, one of the coaches, told me that the manager, Harry Catterick, wanted to see me. I was wearing the overalls we had to put on while we were polishing and went into the elevator and wondered what I had done wrong. When I arrived at his office, he told me he had my father on the phone and that he just told him if the weather did not deteriorate, I was in the team the next day. '
Royle became at the age of 16 on an ice rink in Blackpool and became the youngest player of Everton, a record that would be 40 years old. His first goal would be here, against Chelsea, and would be more profitable at the end of the park.
“I thundered one of all of about seven centimeters,” he remembers with a smile. “You don't forget that. As Mike Channon always said it was a feeling that you can't scratch. I was just a child, but for an Evertonian to score for Everton for these fans, it was great. Great. '
Many more goals would follow. Many more trophies and many more Golden Goodison moments. Such as cruising to the first division championship in 1970 and scored 23 times. The party started in the dressing room. “There is a photo and there were eight bottles of champagne between 11 of us,” Royle recalls.
He may have left for Manchester City in 1974, but Goodison would never leave him. Indeed, in an appropriate turn of fate, Royle's ultimate goal in football would come here – in the colors of Norwich City a year before his retirement.
“My first and last goal here,” he says. “And it was the strangest – I scored and I was welcomed. Ken Brown, the Norwich manager said to me: “I can't believe it. You scored against them and they have welcomed you.” I said, “Well, I am a Liverpool boy, an Evertonian. I am one of them.” I didn't celebrate it, spirit, I'm not that crazy. '
After entering management with Oldham, Royle was a regular visitor for midweek competitions in the glorious eighties of Howard Kendall.
“I was actually brought to the head position,” he says chuckling. 'Good scousers, Hey? I stood in line in front of a cake and suddenly this guy hit me. Then he and my wallet disappeared too. Only in Liverpool. '
Not long later there were happier memories when he answered a SOS in 1994 with the team that really threatened to fall out of the top layer for the first time in 40 years. It was not a task without an immediate challenge.
'The first game was Liverpool, here, Monday evening. I had given my team conversation and the players were in the tunnel. I am in the dressing room and the physio, les helmet, tells me that Duncan Ferguson, who started from the front, was ready for driving on drinking and had spent time in a cell during the weekend.
“He walks onto the field and this is the first I hear. I raged. I didn't rage after the game. Neil “Razor” Ruddock did my job for me. He hit him hard, which was the worst thing you could ever do with Duncan. It is furious and he was great after that. Great. We won 2-0. The sound that night. Wow. “
While he thinks about a good job that was done well in his office, Royle could have forgiven it because he thought his work for the night was over.
“A steward came in and said,” Joe, do us a favor. Are you going to the Winslow (the pub over the road) and are you going to visit the fans? ” “I said,” Why? “. He told me they refused to go home until I had been inside to see them. So I went inside and it was great. It must have been midnight when I arrived there and I had been inside for a long time. It was a riot. '
Perhaps it is of some comfort for those on the blue half of merseyside that, although the stadium can go, the fan base will certainly not.
“I have always maintained that the goodison has changed the results,” Royle explains. 'There have been games when they have started the team and then there is a late rally here. It is that kind of place. And you know, it has always been that I can't remember it will ever be empty. Even in the bad times, and we had a few, the support was always there. The sound was always there. '
We sit opposite the Gwladys Street End, the raw soul of Goodison. Royle is well qualified to comment on its impact.
“When I was old enough, I moved to the boys in the far corner,” he says. 'Let's say it was a course! There were a lot of children, clambering over the handrails and gathering. It was for crooks, but beautiful crooks. The Gwladys Street has always been where it all comes from. It has always been the Gwladys Street -end. '
His viewpoint from 1994 to 1997, a run in which Everton saw the FA Cup lifted, was the halfway through the line and had a number of different characters. “They are all junior managers around the Dugout, right?” he says. “You know, they are all an opinion, something to tell you, which is great.”
He stops, the thought train shifted and tail over his old pounding soil. 'You know, I am a bit tingling to look around. Look at the field for God's sake. If you couldn't control it there, you couldn't control it, right? '
It is a stupid question, but I ask if he will miss the place. “A lot,” he replies. 'A lot of whole. It will be strange when it is Saturday and you will not come to Goodison. Stupid things like just coming in. Behind this, the large parking space when you are here – it was a training field. When the big pitch was outside the order, we would go outside and rise some terrible injuries! I will even miss it to see that. '
Royle's three sons, Lee, Darren and Mark, who have joined us for the morning, now speak with the Groundsman next to a rickety old trailer who is used to collect cuttings you imagine, may not switch to the new house. On the other hand, the club's motto is: Nil Satis Nisi Optimum (nothing but the best is good enough) is carefully painted by hand.
“Don't believe a word they say!” Royle screams down. “That is the soil, Bob, another Everton character,” he explains. “He has been here since about 1800.”
At that moment, the unmistakable siren sounds that marks the beginning of Z cars of the speakers, causing the silence to smell. A tour of the ground takes place and the club recreates the MatchDay experience for those who are on it.
“Johnny Todd,” says Royle, and gives the Walkout -Volkslied its original name. I ask how he will feel when he hears that it is being played here for the last time.
“Ah, honey,” he says, breathing. 'I have never seen Dixie Dean, that was for me, but I will 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 have seen here, Alan Ball, Colin Harvey. Howard Kendall and Fred Pickering too, Fred Pickering, what a striker he was. There have been so many memories. '
Royle will be here for the Southampton match. “I've always scored against them,” he jokes. 'I have four once and they still gave Alan Ball man-of-the-match! I have to add entertainment. I am not someone for souvenirs. I will just accept the memories. '
He still has to visit the new stadium, but is looking forward to it. “It's progress,” he adds. “If they have nothing else, they need the money to pay the wages of the players.”
We go a way to the tunnel of the impossible narrow players, where Royle likes to get involved with that on the Tour. Outside we pause to take his photo under a 50FT mural of itself in blue shirt, white shorts, which control an orange ball.
'Legend' shouts a man who passes a scooter. Some stop and ask for selfies. There is still time to make more memories.
Before we have lunch, there is one last question to be asked and perhaps the most obvious. What does Goodison Park mean for him?
Royle does not hesitate to respond. “Football,” he says. “This is football.”
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