Gareth Owen is a lifelong Evertonian, who watched his first game in the 1940s, and who recently turned 90
The stone of the great Dixie Dean on Everton Way at Hill Dickinson Stadium(Image: Ed Sykes/Sportsphoto/Allstar Via Getty Images)
The Liverpool ECHO always like to hear from our readers about what they read on our sports pages, but ahead of today’s historic Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool (2pm kick-off), which is the first to be played at Hill Dickinson Stadium, one got in touch to share some of his own work.
Gareth Owen is a lifelong Evertonian, who watched his first game in the 1940s, against Burnley, and who recently turned 90.
A writer by trade, he has had six poetry collections published, plus novels and plays, and for a number of years presented the BBC’s ‘Poetry Please!’ programme on Radio 4.
And before what could a pivotal match in the battle for European qualification between Everton, who are 10th, and Liverpool, who are five points further up the Premier League table in fifth, Gareth has shared some of his work with the ECHO.
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He said: “I was brought up in Ainsdale so aged 12 it was a bit of an adventure to go to Everton. Half a crown pocket money didn’t help. I think I went twice with my dad.
“Train to Bank Hall then the long walk along terraces with housewives on their knees scribbling their door steps. Great excitement as the stadium soaring above the houses came into view. Gwladys Street and the Boys’ Pen.”
Gareth, who now lives in Ludlow, names his favourite Everton players as: “Roy Vernon for his goalscoring and trickery in the box. The great Tommy Jones. Ted Sagar. Later Alex Young – such an elegant player. But the one I admired most and tried to base my own game on was Wally ‘Nobby’ Fielding. For his perceptive passing ability.”
But some of the poems Gareth has kindly shared with the ECHO, from his 2006 poetry book, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Please?, regard the club’s greatest-ever player, Dixie Dean, who remains Everton’s leading goalscorer in Merseyside derbies, and who sadly passed away, at the age of 73, after attending a match against Liverpool at Goodison Park in March 1980.
Never Be Another Dixie
Ten, I must have been
When my dad took me to my first game.
Maybe a birthday, I don’t know.
Walking the long walk to the ground
From Bankhall Station
Each fifty yard or so
His dicky lungs gave out
And he would have to rest,
Slumping, hunched upon some stranger’s wall
Inhaling from his pump
Each desperate, shallow breath.
At ten I was embarrassed;
Wished he’d get on with it
For fear we missed the kick off.
The ground was like a huge liner
Surprised to be moored
Amongst the huddled, meagre houses.
He saw me to the Boys’ Pen
While he stood with the swaying crowd
Behind the goal at Gladys Street.
Can’t remember much about the game
Somebody called McKnight scored;
A diving header at the near post.
One-one I think it ended up.
Once, I caught a glimpse of him
Struggling amongst the waving arms
To get the borrowed breath into his lungs.
On the train home, I read the programme
Or watched suburban houses
And the golf links flashing by
As he talked endlessly
About the heroes of his youth:
Jimmy Dunn and Critchley
Warney Cresswell, Dixie Dean.
‘Never be another like Dixie,’
He said, his eyes on something
Further off than I could understand.
I wasn’t listening really:
I never did.
And then the other day
I bought a video: History of the Club;
The kind of thing fanatics buy
Who have a taste for history and the game.
And there suddenly, grainy on the screen,
Was the great man in his prime;
William Ralph Dean Esquire in black and white;
Burly and menacing, levering himself on air
To nod another past some jerseyed, hapless keeper.
Then, something in the background caught my eye.
A small, smudged figure laughing in the crowd.
The hand, raised in exultation,
Couldn’t hide that face I knew
As his clear breath danced on the air,
Rising from uncongested lungs,
Crying ‘Goal’ to the dark sky
As the headed ball crossed the line
And the white net billowed.
****************
1930
After tea on Saturday
The Bootle lads are out
Clattering down the jigger
Booting a tin about.
Fifteen bawling footballers
The scrubbiest kids you’ve seen
And every snot-nosed one of them
Thinks he’s Dixie Dean.