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It is 60 years since the day that changed my life. I can remember every detail – and I am quite certain the minutes when an initial sense of trepidation was replaced by uncontrolled excitement will never leave me.

I played a game for Liverpool Schoolboys at Wigan and scored and did okay in my old wing-half position.

When I arrived home – on Parkhurst Road in Norris Green – I wondered why my mum was waiting at the gate.

When she greeted me with, ‘Two men are here and they want to speak to you’, my mind went into overdrive, frantically trying to work out why I might be in trouble.

My mum interrupted those ominous thoughts to tell me, ‘The scout from Everton is in the front room and the scout from Manchester United is in the back room’.

The 13-year-old me was agog, to say the least. That sinking feeling had disappeared as quickly as it emerged. I was walking on air.

I have the utmost respect for Manchester United and I was a huge admirer of Bobby Charlton.

But there was no decision to make, not really. Everton, for me, were everything. My club. The club.

A few weeks after hosting our unexpected visitors, I went to the Littlewoods building, to meet Harry Catterick, John Moores and Harry Cooke, Everton’s chief scout.

I signed a form of pre-contract, meaning I would officially join on a three-year apprenticeship when I turned 14.

My studies soon went awry, but I didn’t care. I was going to play for Everton.

I was steeped in the Club and would stand on the Paddock as an awestruck young boy, captivated by my heroes, some obvious, others less so. I loved Dave Hickson and Derek Temple but was very fond of Mickey Lill and Tommy Ring, too.

I saw a young Brian Labone playing for the reserves.

Who’d have thought I’d call him a teammate. Captain, my captain. What a man.

My grandfather, George Dainty, a sergeant in Merseyside Police, was a fanatical Evertonian. Legend has it, my mother waited at Broadway on a Saturday evening to find out how Everton got on. If they’d lost, she’d run home to tell my grandmother, who’d make new plans for her night because George would be in such a foul mood.

It is hard to convey the scale of Everton, the enormity of the feelings people have for the Club and its elevated position in so many lives.

Jimmy Gabriel, another player I’d worshipped from the sidelines, encapsulated the sheer vastness of Everton in the best terms I’ve heard.

I loved Jimmy and miss him dearly. He was a beautiful man.

You couldn’t believe he was so tough on the pitch. He’d stand at the top of the tunnel before derby games in case there was trouble; hoping there was trouble.

He was overseeing the reserves when I was manager and asked if he could have a word.

I said, ‘Any time, Jimmy’. Goodness gracious, I was speaking to Jimmy Gabriel.

He was apologetic, telling me he was going to live in America at the end of the season and at pains to say he wasn’t leaving me. That his family were still in America from when he played in the country and he was going to live there for the rest of his life, which he did.

I asked him, ‘Go on Jim, you’ve been a player and a coach and the reserve-team manager, had a couple of spells as caretaker manager – did you never fancy the job?

He said, ‘Joe, I was desperate for this job, totally desperate for this job, and I had it a couple of times and realised, whoosh, all of a sudden, Battlestar Galactica.

‘The size of the place and the size of the expectation and the size of the ground and the size of the fanbase. The whole thing’.

Battlestar Galactica: that was Jimmy’s impression of Everton.

I jumped on Battlestar Galactica’s top deck when I was 16. Mention of my Everton debut at Blackpool is often cloaked in talk of the uproar over Alex Young being left out of the team.

I think wily Harry Catterick didn’t mind the narrative at the time because it deflected from the result.

We lost 2-0 and I’d give myself a five out of 10. I got two buses to the ground, travelling with fans who had no idea about the identity of their very nervous fellow passenger.

We played on a frozen pitch at Bloomfield Road and I am convinced that was the day Harry made up his mind to sign Alan Ball.

While everyone else was skidding over this icy, bone-hard pitch, Alan was dancing over it.

Harry assembled a team that ticked every box. We had steel and flair; talented and fearless young players and, in Labone and John Hurst and Gordon West, a strong and wise spine – and we fancied ourselves against anybody.

Come 1969/70, there was an unspoken urgency to do justice to our quality. We’d reached an FA Cup final in 1968 with a very young team and had seasons when we finished fifth and third.

That wasn’t good enough for us, nor was it what Evertonians expected.

We were always decent to watch and had a great spirit – you’d go home from training laughing; Westy and Labone should have been on the stage together – but we needed to get it right over a season.

There was a huge release of pressure, a sense of validation for a fabulous group of players, when we won that title.

By the time we went to Anfield in March, there was no doubt over us finishing as champions. We were too good to slip up.

Do you know what, though? We had to win that game. Liverpool had won at Goodison and if we’d not got our own back, their players and fans would forever have said, ‘You weren’t the best team in the league’.

We were. By a street.

The night before the game, Ron Yeats, Liverpool’s colossus of a centre-half, said in the local paper I’d not given him too many problems in previous matches.

So when I climbed all over Ron and Ray Clemence to score our opening goal – we won 2-0 – I savoured the moment, standing in front of The Kop with my hands in the air.

I scored the last goal of my career at Goodison, playing for Norwich City.

We won the match but still the Evertonians applauded when the ball hit the net and again when I left the field. Our manager, Ken Brown, said he’d never seen anything like it, he was dumbstruck.

I’m not a big softie, not necessarily an emotional person.

But I felt very emotional that day.

I thought my chance to manage Everton had gone when Mike Walker got the job.

I wasn’t going to miss it twice, not that I was given an opportunity to turn it down after Mike left.

There was a shareholder’s meeting happening at Goodison when I arrived to meet the chairman, Peter Johnson, for an interview.

I went up in the lift, the doors opened, and it was lights on, round of applause, and Peter announcing me as the new Everton manager.

My Uncle Norman was head of the shareholder’s association and he knew I’d got the job before I did, I think.

Peter and I hadn’t discussed a contract. Nor did we for a month or so because every ounce of thought and energy was invested into getting Everton winning again.

The team, in my two full seasons in charge, was as good as I have managed. When we clicked, we were very good indeed, exceptional at times.

The pinnacle, though, certainly in terms of performance, was the FA Cup semi-final against Tottenham.

We were the Underdogs of War, if you like, but we won rather comfortably, really.

It wasn’t long ball football, they couldn’t aim that at us. It was aggressive football, played with passing. Paired with our wonderful support at Elland Road, we were irresistible.

I felt empty the day I was no longer Everton manager. Quite honestly, it was like a divorce.

But I was lucky enough to come back for a few years working with David Unsworth. I’d been set for a job with Norwich but the feelings when the Chairman called to ask me to come home were no different from those I experienced at my house on Parkhurst Road half a century earlier.

When Everton want you, what do you do?

Everton is still my club, it will always be my club. It has been a major part of my life and that won’t change for as long as I am around.

By Joe Royle, Everton Giant