Everton's nemesis IAN RUSH reunites with Goodison Park legend PETER REID for one last walk around the famous old ground… and a trip to the pub

It is 43 years since Ian Rush scored four goals in one of the most legendary Goodison derbies ever and for the first time – just before it is too late and the old place is consigned to footballing history – he is sitting in the home dressing room.

He is relating his own rich and complicated history with the ground, which began with him taking the bus from Flint, the North Wales town where he grew up, to support Everton in the Gwladys Street End. That was where he watched his hero Bob Latchford wrap up 30 goals for the 1977-78 season in a 6-0 win over Chelsea.

The relationship continued with his dream that he, too, would become a hero for the Gwladys Street, when his manager at Chester City told him before a game in 1980 that Everton manager Gordon Lee was in the crowd watching him. The Monday morning headlines told the then 19-year-old that it was not to be. ‘Ian Rush isn’t good enough to sign for Everton,’ is his recollection of them.

‘I was gutted,’ Rush relates from one of the padded leather dressing-room seats at which David Moyes’ players will receive final instructions before the last Goodison derby on Wednesday night. ‘But you have to get on with it. In my head, I told Everton, “I’m going to make you pay”.’

Oh, how he did just that. Rush’s goals against Everton, from the two in the 1986 all-Merseyside FA Cup final and two more in the 1989 final, to the four in the 5-0 Goodison win of 1982, cast long shadows.

‘Perhaps it was for the best I didn’t sign,’ he says, casting a reflective last look up at the stands. ‘You never know about fate. Maybe their style of play wouldn’t have suited me.’

This is his last walk around the old place, taking in the Dixie Dean memorial and Winslow pub on Goodison Road, the dressing rooms and the hallowed turf.

Rush’s first pair of boots, which he had as an 11-year-old, were white, like the ones he had seen Alan Ball wear for Everton. That is no consolation for Everton fans, though, given the damage he inflicted on them.

‘He made me cry more than once,’ one respected Everton-leaning football writer says of Rush. But one of the toughest adversaries he encountered would not have had those battles any other way.

Peter Reid is sitting beside Rush, taking up the same spot where he, as the No 6, was assigned, usually between Derek Mountfield and Trevor Steven.

He is remembering the way you could hear the noise of the crowd at half-time and how the acoustics were unique when you stepped on to the pitch.

‘There was a derby game when I couldn’t breathe for the first 10 minutes and we couldn’t get a touch,’ Reid relates.

‘I’d just run down near the Liverpool fans when I heard someone effing and jeffing about my big ears, “effing blue nose” and all that. I knew the voice and recognised it was one of my relatives. “Sit down Uncle Arthur!” I told him!’

The dressing room, with its TV screen and plunge pools in an adjoining space these days, has changed a little from the more spartan place, with benches to sit on and a team bath, that Reid knew, but it is the same size.

‘Our away dressing room was bigger,’ Rush observes. ‘Bill Shankly insisted that the away dressing room at Anfield was bigger than the home one to make the visiting team feel small in it. Reverse psychology. It stayed that way.’

Wednesday night’s game could give supporters of either side of the Merseyside divide permanent bragging rights. Liverpool and Everton have each won 41 derby matches at Goodison, with 37 drawn. But Rush, of course, will point to 1982’s 5-0 win, which included what must have been an excruciating drive home with Everton’s Kevin Ratcliffe, who had given him a lift to the game at a time when the Liverpool player was serving a driving ban for speeding.

‘We didn’t talk much,’ says Rush. The mood was at least lightened by Ratcliffe having not started the match.

Their journey, with Rush’s match ball on Ratcliffe’s back seat, was testament to the closer relationships and greater mutual respect players shared back then.

Tuesday was designated night out for players of both teams, who usually ended up in Liverpool’s Continental nightclub, where Rush and Reid encountered each other. There was also Benny’s club in Bury, where Manchester United players would sometimes join them.

‘I remember having a drink with you at the bar after that game when you’d done us!’ Reid tells Rush and, though there were some victorious Goodison occasions at that time for Everton – crowned First Division champions in 1985 and 1987 – the challenging days seem to stick most in Reid’s mind.

‘The plane!’ he says, as effervescent as ever. He is talking about the Merseyside clubs’ decision to travel home from the 1986 FA Cup final, which Liverpool won 3-1, on the same chartered jet, to save money.

‘I just couldn’t do it,’ Reid says. ‘I went to Howard Kendall and told him, “I’m not going on it”. He said, “You’ll be fined two weeks wages then”. I took that. I got a lift to Manchester instead. The same went for the open-top coach tour they had planned, with us behind the Liverpool bus. I couldn’t stomach it.’

Rush sat with Everton’s players on the flight. ‘I knew a lot of them,’ he says. Conversation topics may have included the final’s referee, Alan Robinson, who Everton fans have always felt robbed them of the trophy.

There is no bitterness, though. Reid relished every one of those battles and even relates with some fondness the story of how Liverpool coach Ronnie Moran approached him after another Goodison derby and said, ‘Well played, son’ in what he took to be a patronising tone.

‘The next month, we did them at Anfield and I ran up the stairs to find him,’ Reid relates with another big grin. ‘I couldn’t find him. “He’s not here is he?”, I asked them. I ran down the corridor, booted the Boot Room door open and there he was. “Well done, Ronnie, you’ve coached them really well,” I told him.’

No quarter was ever spared by Reid, who first played at Goodison in the English Schools Cup final for Huyton Boys as a 14-year-old and was a Liverpool-supporting schoolboy who, aged seven, stood on Anfield’s Kemlyn Road to see Alan Ball make his debut for Blackpool. Reid was, strictly speaking, a ‘Red’ when Rush scored those four goals in 1982. ‘I was cheering for him that day,’ Reid says. ‘I loved him. Then I signed for Everton and hated him!’

Toughest Liverpool opponent on the Goodison turf? That would be Graeme Souness, says Reid, without a flicker of hesitation. ‘People go on about the pace he had, but Souness was like Rodri. He knew where the ball was going before it was there. He could see a pass and make a pass.’

As adversaries go, Rush was not far behind. ‘He was clever,’ Reid says. ‘I don’t mean academically clever! It was an intuition he had. He reads shoulders. He reads defenders. He knew where the ball was going. How do you describe that? Is it a gift? Yes. That gift is intuition, reading the game, it’s hard to explain.’

Rush says his toughest Goodison challenge came from Ratcliffe, Everton’s most successful captain, who would also clobber him for the first 15 minutes of any game.

‘We roomed together for Wales and I asked him why he always did it,’ Rush relates. ‘He told me refs don’t want to book players in the first 15 minutes. The next time we played Everton I tipped off the ref!’

And there was Reid, of course. ‘When you’ve got Souness and Dalglish talking about him before a game, you knew there was going to be a problem,’ Rush says of him. ‘He cut the supply off.’

Neither knew back then that they would strike up a friendship which entails some merciless ribbing, with Rush, now 63, making capital out of 68-year-old Reid’s Beatles ringtone and Reid making light work of Rush’s fashionable raincoat.

When they played celebrity seniors football together in Asia a few years back, someone – they think it might have been chef Gordon Ramsay – went in hard on Reid early on.

‘That’s the last kick you’re going to get,’ Reid snarled. ‘He was as good as his word,’ Rush grins. Old habits.

They will both be at Goodison on Wednesday night and it is testament to Everton’s class as a club that they want it that way. The club are applying great thought to their departure from the Grand Old Lady, as the stadium is known.

‘The thing about this one that will add spice is it’s an evening kick-off,’ Reid says. ‘What a fitting way to see the fixture off here.

‘There’s something about the evening kick-off that enhances the atmosphere. The atmosphere in those days when we were standing was ridiculous, but it’s still brilliant.’

There will probably be that same old shudder when they see Rush walking in to take his seat. His last game at Goodison was on Sunday, January 4, 1998, in an FA Cup third-round tie for Newcastle, managed by Dalglish.

Everyone was talking about Rush’s pace having gone and there were howls of derision from the Gwladys Street when he emerged from the substitute’s bench to replace Tino Asprilla soon after half-time,

‘It was freezing and Kenny had told me to warm up because Tino didn’t like the cold,’ Rush relates. ‘When I stood up the stick started — “Red sh***e” — and I just started laughing because I knew I was going to score.

‘It was John Barnes who set me up, actually. He crossed it. I tapped it in. Something told me. I knew it was going to happen.

‘It’s a shame the old stadium has to go. Time moves on, nothing stands still in life. But it feels like part of me is going. It was always such a great place for me.’