Graeme Sharp: A Man Who Has Earned The Respect Of Every Evertonian

The identity of Everton’s goalscorer when Howard Kendall’s team survived a hairy night against unheralded University College Dublin was rather apt.

Graeme Sharp slammed the ball into the roof of the Park End net as Everton’s ultimately fabulous and triumphant European Cup Winners’ Cup campaign spluttered into gear.

It took Sharp a while to get going at Goodison Park, too. When Graeme Sharp got shifting, though, heavens. The Scot epitomised that saying about those who wait being visited by the best things.

By the time Sharp directed a header teasingly out of reach of Bayern Munich goalkeeper Jean-Marie Pfaff to light a fire under one of Goodison’s most famous nights – the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final victory over the Germans in April 1985 – Everton’s inauspicious start to the European competition against a “team of students”, to borrow Neville Southall’s depiction of UCD, had receded deep into the memory banks.

So too, Sharp’s Everton league debut at Brighton & Hove Albion, the callow Scot replacing Bob Latchford for the final 26 minutes of an end-of-season dead-rubber 0-0 draw forgotten by Evertonians before they crossed the Sussex border for home.

>>>SHARP APPOINTED EVERTON PLAYERS' LIFE PRESIDENT<<<

A decade later Sharp, who has been appointed the Club’s Players’ Life President, was surpassing Latchford as Everton’s greatest post-war scorer.

Of the 160 goals he struck from a mighty 447 appearances, everyone will have their own favourite.

Top of the pile in most eyes will be Sharp’s howitzer at Anfield. That cushioned touch with his left boot to control Gary Stevens’ forward lob, followed by the scud-missile which exploded off Sharp’s right instep to utterly defeat the red-capped Bruce Grobbelaar. All of it is safely tucked away in the mind’s eyes of Evertonians fortunate enough to be around to see it.

Sharp celebrated exuberantly and rightly so. But the sight of Everton’s centre-forward lost in the moment was meaningful. He’s understated by nature. Modest and reserved.

Sharp understood the significance of that goal. Reading the runes on that October evening after Kendall’s team felled Liverpool you’d have had an inkling Everton were on the brink of something special.

When Sharp rammed home a cross from Adrian Heath to score against UCD, patting his teammate on the head by way of thanks as he strode purposefully back to restart the game? Not so much.

Everton had won the previous season’s FA Cup and Sharp scored in the Wembley final. Of course he did.

But there remained questions over whether the Blues’ first silverware under Howard Kendall represented one joyous moment in time or the catalyst for something more extraordinary.

UCD grazed the woodwork late in that first-round match, the culmination of a wave of late pressure as Everton, incongruously kitted out in yellow jerseys on their own Goodison turf, escaped an away goal defeat – the first-leg in Ireland was scoreless – by the skin of their teeth.

“Everyone expected a walkover,” goalkeeper Southall would later relate.


Spearheaded by the brilliant Sharp, Everton’s 1984/85 team quickly evolved into a complete unit capable of trampling over all comers

Heath was injured and replaced in the side by the herculean Andy Gray from early December.

Graeme Sharp was the constant in Everton’s forward line. There was no budging him for another six years, the teenager from Scottish second-tier Dumbarton who Gordon Lee took a punt on in 1980 maturing into an authentic Everton great.

Immediately after succeeding Lee as manager in 1981 Kendall recognised in Sharp’s stature, poise, skill and clinical finishing a potentially rich source of goals.

The player responded to being given his head by striking 15 times at a rate of better than one every two starts in his first full season in the side in 1981/82.

Any doubts concerning Sharp’s ability to act as the focal point of Everton’s attack had been banished and on he went.

Seventeen goals the next season. Another 11 in 1983/84.

The following campaign represented Sharp’s magnum opus. He scored 30 times in all – 21 as Everton ended a 15-year wait to be English champions and four in the Blues’ first successful European campaign.

Gray’s belligerence and bravery often attracted the headlines. Equally, the relentlessly prolific Gary Lineker received Everton’s striking plaudits after supplanting Gray for 1985/96.

That would have suited Sharp, operating in the shadows.

On the field, he burst into life. Potent and powerful in the air, ruthless in the penalty box, courageous, and far more subtle in possession than broadly acknowledged, Sharp was a magnificent footballer.

The newfangled mania for pressing? Sharp was doing it 35 years ago. It was called closing down and he had an insatiable appetite for it, hassling defenders or dropping to put the squeeze on an opposition midfielder.


It should be noted, too, that Sharp scored goals when they mattered. He wasn’t one of those who massaged his totals by plundering the division’s also-rans.

Liverpool and UCD and the value of those match-winning strikes we’ve covered.

His header completed the victory over QPR which wrapped up Everton’s 1984/85 title, nearly 12 months after Sharp opened the scoring in an FA Cup final.

He pounced for the winner against Sheffield Wednesday in the semi-final of the same competition in 1986.

There were a number of decisive strikes as Everton reclaimed their title in 1986/87. Sharp could be merciless, too, going to town on Sheffield Wednesday with a first-half hat-trick to finally shake off the Yorkshire side at the fourth time of asking in a 1988 FA Cup third round tie – and scoring the lot when Everton won 4-0 at Southampton in October 1987.

Sharp’s onfield achievements and statesmanlike persona made him a shoo-in for the position when Everton appointed its first former player Ambassador following the turn of the century.

He cares deeply about the Club. See Sharp after Everton have won and he’s beaming. The steam billows from his ears when they lose.

Sharp had so much to prove for his Everton stay to be anything other than fleeting when he moved over the border 40 years ago.

Today he is embroidered in the Goodison Park fabric. A proven winner who will do whatever it takes to make Everton better. That is why he’s been asked to fill the Club’s prestigious new post.

Graeme Sharp has the respect of everybody who cares for Everton.

My, he’s earned it.