One of the many highlights of the recent successful trip to Australia was the opportunity to reunite Gary Stevens with the Everton family.

The former Blues defender, who won two league titles as well as the European Cup Winners’ Cup and an FA Cup, is based in Perth on the west coast of Australia and, at the Club’s invitation, he and his family were flown into Sydney to spend a few days with the touring party.

Gary and his wife Louise tragically lost their four-year-old son Jack just over a year ago to juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia, and in an exclusive interview, filmed in Sydney, he reflects on the heartache, trauma and subsequent hardships.

“Some days it’s hard to get out of bed,” he admits.

In an open and occasionally emotional interview, Gary reveals how the charity he and Louise have established, Forever Four, has been a really helpful part of the healing process, and how they are urging the Australian government to amend the method of stem cell donation.

“It’s so easy in England, but in Australia it isn’t and we’re challenging that,” he says.

Gary also speaks about the thought process behind his decision to emigrate to Western Australia, why the lads of 1984/85 will always be a special group, the reason he and Trevor Steven wrote a book together and why his wife still berates him for not taking the opportunity to get some of Diego Maradona’s kit when they were randomly selected for a post-match drugs test in Mexico!

And how he ended up on an Argentinian stamp!

After such a challenging period in their lives, Gary and Louise are putting a great deal of effort into foreverfour.com.au and, as he says in his interview, “We will always have three boys, it’s just that Jack isn’t with us anymore.”

Watch Gary Stevens in conversation above or by clicking here.