Chris Beesley hails a brand new dawn for Everton at Hill Dickinson Stadium in this week's Royal Blue column
ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has covered Everton and Liverpool both in the Premier League and abroad since 2005. He cut his teeth in professional sports journalism at the Ellesmere Port Pioneer and then the Welsh edition of the Daily Post, where he also covered Manchester United. Prior to that he worked on the student newspaper Pluto at the University of Central Lancashire, a role in which he first encountered David Moyes. Chris is well-known for his sartorial elegance and the aforementioned Scottish manager once enquired of him at a press conference: "Is that your dad's suit you've got on?" while the tradition continued in 2023 with new Blues boss Sean Dyche complimenting him on his smart appearance.
The day that many feared would never come has finally arrived. And while Everton will quite rightly always celebrate their club’s glorious past, they can now start looking forwards.
After spending the last 133 years at Goodison Park, the first purpose-built football ground in England, the Blues are playing their inaugural first-team game in front of fans at Hill Dickinson Stadium as they host Italian side Roma, who themselves are also owned by The Friedkin Group.
Regardless of what happens over those 90 minutes this afternoon – manager David Moyes has been reiterating that he would have expected to have signed more players by now but at least got Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall through the door this week – this should be a bright new dawn for the club and their loyal but long suffering supporters.
Many Evertonians, who have been forced to become increasingly hardened to repeated setbacks, had understandable concerns that the dream of playing on the banks of the ‘Royal Blue’ Mersey would ever come to fruition.
However, while such doubts are only natural, this magnificent project, which will be of significant benefit both financially and culturally to the Liverpool City Region, has also been completed in the face of what has often been an unhealthy obsession from a minority of rival fans who were nowhere to be seen during the public consultation processes but have somehow felt emboldened by framing themselves as keyboard warriors and haters with a petty litany of trolling.
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There have been – “It will never get built;” “It will never get finished – look at Valencia;” “It’s just a big sandpit;” and “Best stadium in the Championship,” jibes. Well, they know where they can shove their cones now!
It’s true that Everton have had to overcome some huge obstacles just to get to this point. The site itself, on a dock, was far from straightforward and as architect Dan Meis pointed out when speaking to the ECHO during the recent tour of the USA, the Blues could have saved lots of money and headaches by building at an alternative location, but this was by far the most iconic and desirable place to move.
Since then, there has been the boardroom upheaval and subsequent takeover of the club (but not before Farhad Moshiri tried to offload Everton to several other potential buyers); a global pandemic that saw professional football played behind closed doors for the first time; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; a threat of a breakaway European ‘Super League’ and of course the Blues’ near misses of dropping out of the Premier League having been one goal away from a first relegation in 72 years in 2023 when posting the lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history.
The following season, when Everton were handed two separate points deductions for single PSR breaches, it was cited in their official appeal documents how Goodison Park was now in the bottom three of the Premier League for generating matchday revenue.
It cannot be a mere coincidence that the Blues’ longest ever trophy drought has corresponded with a period in which ‘The Grand Old Lady’ has fallen from her position as being the pre-eminent club ground in the country to a venue overtaken by so many rivals that is no longer financially viable.
With new owners, the return of a manager who understands the club and how to get the best out of it, and the benefits of Hill Dickinson Stadium, both on and off the pitch, Everton finally have some justifiable reasons to be cheerful.
Some have claimed the Blues should have built bigger with 60,000 plus having become the ‘new normal’ for aspirational Premier League clubs, but Meis has argued passionately in the defence of making the new stadium 'right sized'.
What isn’t up for debate is the fact that while Everton had 16 crowds of over 70,000 at Goodison Park, they have only once enjoyed an average attendance north of 50,000 over a season (51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning season), so if they can fill Hill Dickinson Stadium, they can now play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history, with today’s game set to be their largest home gate since 53,323 watched a League Cup quarter-final against Liverpool over 38 years ago on January 21, 1987.
Having just come back from 12 nights in the USA covering the club’s participation in the Premier League Summer Series, this correspondent can vouch for the size and passion of the global Everton family and there is so much more potential out there to be unlocked if the team can get things right on the pitch in the years ahead.
And while the journey from Walton to Vauxhall is just a couple of miles, figuratively speaking it can be a huge leap forwards.
Goodison’s unique legacy should never be forgotten, though, and as well as me marking 25 years of service at the company that is now Reach PLC, this week also saw the publication of my first book, Spirit of the Blues, with many American supporters, like their British counterparts, eager to get hold of a copy.
Spirit of the Blues is out now
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Complete with a foreword from Everton’s most successful captain Kevin Ratcliffe, who appears on the cover alongside Howard Kendall, Neville Southall, Dixie Dean, Kevin Campbell, Duncan Ferguson and David Moyes, with illustrations by Paul Trevillion, the world’s number one sports artist, the book features 100 of the Blues’ most memorable matches and greatest games at Goodison Park and across 16 action-packed chapters chronicling golden eras, landmark moments, Merseyside Derbies, quirky incidents and goals galore, is the definitive story of the club’s 133 years at the venue that has staged the most English top flight matches, told with the help of those who were there to witness the drama.