My Everton #170: The Wall Of Sound

My Everton

29 May 26

By John Weir

I wasn’t born in Everton but I was born an Evertonian. My father grew up in Olney Street, just by County Road, but he had no interest in football. Fortunately, my mother came from a family in Stanfield Road – five boys and four girls, who, with my grandfather, were all dedicated to the Blue side of the park, and I learnt very early that I was in a family that would see I was “brought up proper".

There was, apparently, another team in Liverpool but we didn’t say much about them. I remember my uncles would speak in whispers of respect for a certain Billy Liddell – proof that Evertonians have always been a generous and sporting family – but, of course, we always had the great Dixie Dean.

I never knew the greatest goalscorer of all-time but I remember meeting another hero of the 1933 team. My Auntie Doll had moved out of a pre-fab into a new council house in Aintree Village, where the first goalie to wear No.1 in a Cup final, Ted Sagar, was publican of the Blue Anchor. I was hardly as big as the bar when my uncles sneaked me in to shake hands with the big man. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. Once or twice we went out from the Pier Head to Aintree on the overhead railway. I mention this because the electricity generating centre for the railway was at Bramley-Moore Dock, the home of our new place – Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Before the War, my parents had moved to Warrington, where I was born in Grappenhall, in 1946. But when I was a boy we would regularly get the train at weekends from Warrington Central to Liverpool Central and then on to my grandmother’s house, where the whole family would congregate on matchdays. I was then handed over to my uncles and we all walked down to Goodison. I was young and didn’t really understand the game but I was hooked from the very first match.

The energy and excitement, the build-up before the match and then going through the turnstiles, all took you into another world, the world of Everton, of great football, far from the post-war brickfields that we walked past on our way to the ground.

In those days, fans carried rattles which made an extraordinary “wall of sound” (rattles were banned in the '70s) but Goodison had some important extras. The whole ground was enclosed (except for the church), the stands are up against the pitch and, before the Main Stand was replaced, these stands were wooden, so fans would stamp their feet on the boards to create the most amazing atmosphere. It was like a cauldron of noise which must have been terrifying to opposing teams!

Every time I went into the ground and felt that atmosphere, it was as if some sort of magic happened. My family became part of a bigger family.

We are all Evertonians and I don’t have the words to explain what that means.

By John Weir, Evertonian