Know your history by reading up on fun facts

Nov 19 2008 by Chris Beesley, Liverpool Daily Post

EVERTON Football Club has made many television appearances over the years but perhaps the oddest occasion came when one of their shirts was spotted on cult comedy show The League of Gentlemen.

As author of The Everton Miscellany Mark O’Brien puts it: “In the series two finale of a show that was known for being bizarre, a man wearing the dreadful 1995 Everton away kit is part of a crazed mob chasing the mayor of Royston Vasey, played by Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown.”

Not all the golden nuggets of information in O’Brien’s new book are as off the wall as this but the latest in Vision Sports Publishing’s miscellany’s series on major British football clubs is packed with quirky facts about all things Everton.

As a club who have been playing almost continuously at the top of English professional football since it started, Everton possesses a rich and colourful history to match any team.

O’Brien, who has penned What’s Our Name? Everton! and The Road to Rotterdam is also regular contributor to Daily Post fans column ‘Blue Watch’ but he admitted that his latest project was something of new territory for him.

He said: “A friend of mine, Andy Mitten, who had written The Manchester United Miscellany recommended me to the publishers but I had to do a lot of reading.

“I ended up with so much information, it was a case of whittling it all down.

“There were lots of obvious things to put in like the profiles of legendary players but I know a lot of Everton supporters are great on their history and I’m not a ‘statto’.

“Like many fans of my generation (I’m in my late 30s), I reckon my knowledge is ok on the more recent stuff but apart from Dixie Dean I was pretty woolly on stuff before the 1950s.”

O’Brien has dug up a mine of lesser-known but intriguing tit-bits of Everton trivia from the early years including the tale of prolific Victorian forward Jack Southworth who bucked the trend of ex-pros becoming publicans to spend his time after hanging up his boots as violinist with Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra.

One of his favourite snippets is the story of former Everton team-mates John Brearley and John Cameron who were plying their trade with German clubs when the First World War broke out and were forced to spend the duration of the conflict in a PoW camp with Derby County and England legend Steve Bloomer – the man who first dubbed Everton ‘The School of Science.’

The pair organised regular tournaments to entertain the prisoners and with something of a captive audience, crowds of over a thousand watched some of the bigger games played at the camp.

O’Brien hopes to have included some element of the Everton psyche throughout the book.

He said: “There have obviously been several high-profile occasions when Evertonians feel they have been hard done by down the years and I must admit there does seem to be a theme of a ‘sense of injustice’ running through the pages.

“Considering what’s happened to our team over the years I think that’s part of the Evertonians’ make-up.”

High-profile setbacks are documented such as the European ban post-Heysel and baffling refereeing decisions by Pierluigi Collina and Clive Thomas plus the inconvenience of competitive football breaking off for two world wars while Everton were reigning League Champions.

However, O’Brien has also unearthed an incident from the 1904/05 season when a London ‘pea souper’ cost Everton the title!

On November 26 1904 Everton were leading 3-1 away to Arsenal but with the result seemingly in the bag, the referee abandoned the match due to thick fog with just 15 minutes remaining.

The match was not replayed until the penultimate game of the season in late April when a 2-1 win for the Gunners led to Everton finishing runners-up to eventual champions Newcastle by just a single point.