Goodison riddance

After over a century of hosting professional football Goodison Park may soon be facing the bulldozers, as Graham Ennis reports

During a recent edition of BBC TV’s Close Up North on December 5th, Peter Johnson, Everton’s Chairman, admitted moving away from Goodison Park was a “possibility”. He had said so before: in an interview with The Evertonian (a Pravda-esque publication printed in conjunction with the Liverpool Echo), and curiously first of all in an interview with the fanzine When Skies are Grey. The alarm bells didn’t sound then, but this time the local media leapt on the issue.

The relocation of a football club is a highly charged issue. Like supporters everywhere Evertonians selfishly assume that the club could not continue without us and that any proposals for the future must be shaped by our views. Therefore, it is understandable that many supporters are appalled by such proposals. Johnson was shocked at the strength of feeling he’d unleashed and, a mere 24 hours later, was forced to state, “We are not leaving . . . A move away from Goodison is only one option among others. I must stress the whole thing is embryonic.” However, he was careful not to dismiss the idea completely and finished by welcoming “more fans’ views on this”.

Goodison Park was once the finest football ground in the country. In 1909 a magazine wrote “behold Goodison Park, no single picture could be taken of the entire scene the ground presents, it is so magnificently large”. The ground was dubbed ‘Toffeeopolis’ and throughout the early part of this century was further enhanced by double-decker stands on each side. In 1969, three years after Goodison had hosted a World Cup Semi-Final, a new Main Stand was built – the first triple decker structure of its kind in the country.

But for almost two decades after the building of the new Goodison Road Stand there was little or no new work done. In that time other grounds, such as Old Trafford, surpassed the standards set by Toffeeopolis. Only the Taylor Report stung a reactionary board into action. Regrettably their proposals lacked ambition. Aged, shallow terrace steps had seats concreted in and, finally, in 1994 the Stanley Park End stand, built in 1907, was demolished, and a new, ugly Park Stand constructed.

That year was also characterized by a boardroom struggle which resulted in Tranmere Rovers’ Chairman (and an ex Liverpool FC season ticket holder), Peter Johnson, gaining control. The question of a move away from Goodison has arisen now because Johnson sees the stadium as a stumbling block to his ambitions. This season, even with the team being unusually poor at home, Goodison Park has been sold out on a number of occasions and in two years the number of season ticket holders had increased from 7,000 to 25,000. To meet this increased demand the capacity of the ground will need to be increased.

Re-development of Goodison Park, though preferable, is unrealistic, Johnson claims, therefore there is a need to seriously examine possible new sites. Aerial photographs of the ground clearly show that much of what the Chairman says has the ring of truth. Built amongst a mass of Victorian streets, any major redevelopment of Goodison Park would be sure to be a bureaucratic nightmare. (The redevelopment of Liverpool’s Kemlyn Road stand was held up by two sisters refusing to move from their home, and the proposed extension of the Anfield Road Stand has been delayed by the actions of local residents.)

Moreover, the ground is showing its age. Stands on Gwladys Street and Bullens Road need replacing, and ten percent of seats in the ground offer a restricted view of the pitch; in an age when cantilever stands are commonplace, Goodison Park is a bastion of posts and pillars.

But, as Goodison is synonymous with the club, Everton FC having played on the former Mere Green site for over a hundred years, Peter Johnson knows he must tread carefully. Consequently he has pledged that the fans will decide whether the club moves out: exactly how he hasn’t said. At Sunderland, a supporters’ poll on a move away from Roker Park was denounced as something akin to an election in a banana republic. “There was a movement set up campaigning against the move, but it never really came to anything . . . and a sort of sad acceptance has taken over,” said Martyn McFadden, editor of the Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme.

Despite the fact that the club still comically refuses to say anything more than that a move from Goodison is just one of several options, the wheels of the propaganda machine have started turning. Players old and new are quizzed, Dave Watson’s view – “in the long run maybe it is the way forward” – being typical.

Commercial Director Clifford Finch has raised the stakes further by playing the ‘Nil Satis Nisi Optimum’ card. “Does our badge mean anything at all?” he asked, “And if the badge does mean anything I think it is only right and proper that the Chairman and the board of Everton should be thinking of what position the club will be in, not in the year 2000, the year 2005 but in the next hundred years.”

The club’s motto, literally meaning ‘nothing but the best will do’, has been used down the years as just cause for all manner of seemingly unpopular decisions. Johnny Carey was sacked, famously in a taxi, by the then owner John Moores because his team didn’t reach the expected high standard – just when most commentators thought he was turning things around – and Peter Johnson dismissed Mike Walker on the same grounds in 1995. Such tactics suggest that the board is attempting to claim the moral high ground and that any decision to relocate will be presented to supporters as a fait accompli.

My guess is that soon the club will announce proposals for a public flotation, perhaps as early as this summer and then, with the funding secured, the option to move will become a firm proposal, architectural plans of an ambitious, state of the art 55,000 capacity ground will be leaked in a final attempt to win over any dissenters, and by the turn of the century a new Goodison Park will have risen on the outskirts of the city.

Such cynicism may appear unhealthy, but these days it’s an attitude that is almost a prerequisite of supporting a Premiership team whose pursuit of the Murdoch dollar is both fevered and relentless.

From WSC 120 February 1997. What was happening this month