“The best days are when both bars are full and the weather’s halfway decent so people can stand outside – but fine weather and an Everton win are two big asks.”
Dave Bond, landlord of the Winslow Hotel, is pondering the high points of his decade running the pub directly over the road from Goodison Park.
The 1-0 win over Bournemouth which kept Everton up in May 2023 was one such day when the sun shone and the result was right, and he still remembers sitting in his office upstairs and hearing the noise when Abdoulaye Doucoure’s winning strike smacked the net.
“Because I was on the first floor directly across from the Main Stand, the noise comes right across,” he explains.
“If you’re down in the pub, you won’t hear it. And because between the live action and what you see on your TV screen there’s a delay, I just zoomed down the stairs and got behind the bar and said, ‘We’re going to score here, I know!’”
The forecast may not be so good for Saturday’s Merseyside derby but a significant day awaits all the same. Goodison’s 120th and last derby will resonate deeply for the red-brick Winslow, opened in the 1880s before Everton set up home over the road on leaving Anfield in 1892. This is a pub steeped in Everton history.
Dixie Dean, the legendary centre-forward looking down from the giant awning on the Main Stand opposite, was a regular here when living on nearby Goodison Avenue.
His team-mate Norman Greenhalgh, one of Everton’s 1939 league champions, was landlord in the 1950s.
In the 1990s, it was home to the official supporters’ club – not long after Joe Royle had popped in after his first game as manager, a 2-0 derby win on a November night 30 years ago.
To feel that history – and sense what Saturday may bring for both the Winslow and the Bramley-Moore pub opposite Everton’s new riverside home – The i Paper paid a visit to the two establishments, dropping in ahead of the 3pm fixture against Brentford two Saturdays ago.
The Winslow Hotel (11.30am)
23/11/24 Liverpool , UK - story on the pubs most local to Goodison Park and the newly built Everton Statdium on the Mersey waterfront.The Winslow Hotel opposite Goodison Park home to Everton AFC
The Winslow Hotel opposite Goodison Park (Photo: Steve Morgan)
It is not yet midday and some 30 punters are already inside the Howard Kendall Bar.
At a table in the corner, two regulars sit remembering derbies past.
“My favourite was when Andy King scored, when we hadn’t beaten them for seven years,” says Phil Harvey, a match-goer for over 50 years, citing a happy afternoon in 1978.
“My favourite derby wasn’t here, it was when Kevin scored,” says his friend Bryan Cadwallader, recalling the late Kevin Campbell’s Anfield winner in 1999.
A blue-and-white flag bearing Campbell’s name is on display in the window above the former Everton captain’s favourite perch.
23/11/24 Liverpool , UK - story on the pubs most local to Goodison Park and the newly built Everton Statdium on the Mersey waterfront.The Winslow Hotel opposite Goodison Park home to Everton AFC
Kevin Campbell’s name is displayed on a flag (Photo: Steve Morgan)
“He was sitting there and we were all having a chat,” adds Cadwallader remembering his final visit in September.
The pair – who concur that the best night of all here was after the 1985 Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final against Bayern Munich – are themselves sitting beneath a plaque dedicated to their late friend Stephen Kelly.
“Ste used to come with us and when he died, they put that plaque up,” explains Cadwallader. It is that kind of place.
Further inside, a group from Everton’s Dutch supporters’ club occupy a table.
“We are not glory hunters!” says Anton Brussen, their chairman, aiming a dig at the fans across the park.
“This is a friendly place and it has history,” he adds.
“What’s going to happen with the Winslow and the whole vibe you have here?”
23/11/24 Liverpool , UK - story on the pubs most local to Goodison Park and the newly built Everton Statdium on the Mersey waterfront. Phil Harvey ( left) and Bryan Cadwallader ( right) with a picture of Steve Hoster who passed away They are sat in Ste's Seat a place reserved for them on Match days
A plaque commemorating Everton fan Stephen Kelly (Photo: Steve Morgan)
It is a question we will return to later, but it is now 1pm and the place is starting to fill.
On a matchday, the Winslow can shift “3,000 pints” with “90 per cent of sales” coming in the approach to kick-off according to Bond, an Irishman who got “hooked on Everton” when listening to the 1977 League Cup final on an old longwave radio.
What happens on the pitch has a bearing on post-match sales, he adds.
“We’ve lost a lot of games at Goodison in the last few years and it’s night and day between a win and a loss.
“It’s a 25 per cent difference when they win.”
The Bramley-Moore (1.15pm)
23/11/24 Liverpool , UK - story on the pubs most local to Goodison Park and the newly built Everton Statdium on the Mersey waterfront.Bramley Mopore , Regent Rd , Liverpool
The Bramley-Moore pub on Regent Road (Photo: Steve Morgan)
It takes less than 10 minutes to drive the 2.2 miles to the Bramley-Moore pub, an unfussy place on one side of Regent Road, part of Liverpool’s old dock road.
On the other side, behind the thick dock wall is Everton’s new stadium, the grey clouds sitting on its silver roof.
“It’s like a spaceship,” says a man stood beside the pub door.
This is a traditional dockers’ pub, founded in 1758. In the 19th century, nine per cent of the world’s trade passed through Liverpool’s docks.
Angela Douglas, the landlady, explains that once there was “a pub on every corner” as she brings over a book about the history of the area’s hostelries.
Mirroring the subsequent decline in trade, many of them closed but for the Bramley-Moore “there’s a bright future ahead” according to Tony Scott, captain of the pub’s football team and host of the All Together Now Everton podcast.
An extra room upstairs will be refurbished and opened in time for next season, he explains.
And if one staff member is wearing red, Scott says the “slow process of turning it into an Everton pub” has begun.
“We had about 100 Scandinavian Evertonians in the other week and Angela played all the Everton songs on the jukebox.”
Among the fans here this lunchtime, teenager Iestyn James from Mold is a first-time visitor “just getting used to the new environment”.
Curiosity also brought Paul Wynne, another Welsh Evertonian, here and he has built the Bramley-Moore into his pre-match routine.
“Two and a half years ago we came on a matchday and said, ‘Let’s have a look [at the stadium],” he explains.
“We’d not realised there was a pub bang opposite, so we thought we’d come for a beer and watch it going up week by week. And we’re still here.”
And does it feel like a “Blue” pub already?
“Somebody came here once and put You’ll Never Walk Alone on,” Wynne replies.
“That didn’t go down well.”
23/11/24 Liverpool , UK - story on the pubs most local to Goodison Park and the newly built Everton Statdium on the Mersey waterfront.Sarah behind the bar in The Bramley Moore
Sarah behind the bar in the Bramley-Moore (Photo: Steve Morgan)
For all the bars and restaurants within the new Everton stadium, the Bramley-Moore is set to feel the benefits of over 50,000 football fans passing by every other weekend.
As for the Winslow, Bond admits there are question marks given matchday trade accounts for “around 80 per cent of turnover”.
“It’s an Everton pub and if you lose the Everton trade, I don’t know if my heart would be in it,” he reflects.
That said, a planning application has gone into Liverpool City Council to turn the Winslow into a guesthouse, with bedrooms on the upper two floors and the ground floor retaining its bar area.
Fans could be taken down to the new stadium in coaches on matchdays.
Bond is also talking to Sefton Council about taking over an outdoor venue in nearby Bootle, the Salt and Tar, which he could potentially run as a “satellite fan zone” with a stadium shuttle service.
By now it is 5.30pm and the disappointment of Everton’s goalless draw with 10-man Brentford is felt almost as keenly as the damp.
Standing in his pub’s entrance beside a large image of Howard Kendall, Bond gazes into the murk and says: “Normally when I’m standing outside, I can hear everything over the road. I couldn’t hear a whimper.”
He, along with all his regulars, will be hoping for louder and better on Saturday, when the Winslow will be packed for its final derby day.