THEY were known as the Mersey Millionaires, and in seven years won two league titles and an FA Cup. They broke transfer records, and under the backing of the incredibly wealthy Moores family became a formidable force in English football.”
In studio four at Sky Sports’ Isleworth headquarters Jeff Stelling is setting the scene for a nostalgic journey back to 1970 with three Everton legends.
A fantasy fireside chat for Evertonians over a certain age is about to begin as Howard Kendall, Colin Harvey and Joe Royle settle into their leather seats. With wine glasses on the coffee table and city lights in the background, it is easy to forget it is a wet Monday lunchtime.
Kendall has just had some stray make-up removed from his suit lapel – “I can’t go home like that,” he jokes – and now the small talk about that evening’s Anfield derby stops and the memories come flooding back.
Sky’s Time of our Lives series revisits clubs’ golden eras and Royle needs little prompting to describe the 1970 team as Everton’s finest.
“We played great football and we turned into a winning machine,” he says. “Alan Ball, God bless him, used to say, ‘If you want to play football against us we’ll play you, if you want to battle us we’ll battle you, if you want to kick us we’ll kick you’.”
Stelling asks his guests to shed light on Harry Catterick, the architect of Everton championship-winning sides of both 1963 and 1970. “He ran it like a boot camp at times,” says Royle, as the trio portray an introverted figure, seldom seen on the training pitch and the polar opposite of his rival across the park, Bill Shankly.
Harvey says: “He never told you that you had a good game. If he helped you off with your shirt you thought, ‘Oh, I did all right today’.
“I always found it annoying that the talk was of Bill Nicholson, Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Don Revie. His record almost stood up to theirs but because he didn’t court the press he didn’t get the recognition that they did.”
There may have been a ‘Beware of the Cat’ sign on the garage door at Bellefield, as Kendall recalls, but Catterick was a “very innovative” tactician.
“We were playing five in midfield – three in the middle and two wide men – and Joe up front on his own, which was unheard of anywhere,” says Harvey.
