At a lunch place in Liverpool’s Castle Street on Monday, we reacquainted Ian Rush with an image of himself posing in an Everton shirt.
It was a 1989 April Fools’ stunt for Shoot magazine, who pictured him at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground and superimposed blue ‘Goodison’ seats in the background to make it seem like their ‘world exclusive’ — ‘Rush signs for Everton’ — was already done.
Rush, a Shoot columnist at that time, certainly hadn’t forgotten surreptitiously donning the royal blue shirt on Liverpool FC soil that day. ‘Bob Paisley didn’t know about it,’ he told me. ‘It would have been interesting to see his reaction if he’d seen me.’
And neither had Peter Reid, his one-time adversary in the city, who was with us. It was the thought of the outcry that such an image would provoke these days that had the two of them chuckling away — and they certainly had a point. Can you just imagine the response if Mo Salah rocked up somewhere in an Everton shirt?
‘I jumped at the idea and lots of fans bought into it,’ Rush said. ‘But imagine doing it now? I don’t think you’d get away with it. There would be a meltdown with social media. It would explode.’
Four or five hours in Rush and Reid’s company, bringing them together at Goodison Park for one last time before the stadium’s final Merseyside derby tonight, was sustenance for the soul. A reminder that the casual hate which stalks the game these days, with clubs living in perpetual fear of some form of mortal ‘reputational damage’, is not football’s natural state.
Liverpool icon Ian Rush wore an Everton shirt as an April Fool’s joke in the Eighties
Current club legend Mo Salah would receive nothing but hate if he tried a similar stunt
Mail Sport columnist Ian Herbert recalls how the Everton and Liverpool players used to be closer back in Rush’s day
Talk over lunch turned to how many Evertonians played for Liverpool and vice versa. Jamie Carragher, Michael Owen, Steve McManaman, Steve McMahon and Robbie Fowler were all boyhood Blues, as was Rush — who joined Liverpool for £300,000, three months after Everton manager Gordon Lee broke his heart by not signing him.
The players of the two sides were so much closer back then. Everton’s Adrian Heath and Liverpool’s Sammy Lee were good friends. Mike Lyons and Phil Thompson, the captains entering the 1980s, would have a bet at the start of the season on which of the two sides would finish higher in the table. The senior administrators — Liverpool’s Peter Robinson and Jim Greenwood at Everton — ensured that a deep mutual appreciation ran through the clubs.
Rush told me he felt that Liverpool or Everton supporters ‘seeing three or four Scousers in both teams’ forged a form of grudging respect among fans for the rival side. For some, that seems unthinkable now.
Social media quickens hate and vitriol, of course — sending it around the houses in a way that was absent in those analogue days. But the harsher attitudes are a product of the changing demographic, particularly at Anfield, where so many more people arrive for games from outside the city and view
Everton as just another opponent — neither a rival nor a threat. Some on the Everton side of the divide detest that. For them, the residual sense of cross-city fraternity has gone.
Occasionally, we see evidence of old relationships which those beautiful few hours with Rush and Reid revealed. The late Everton chairman Bill Kenwright’s moving speech at the 2013 Hillsborough anniversary remembrance service, for example, hasn’t been forgotten.
‘We do get these moments which are a reminder of the bonds that used to be there,’ says Simon Hart, the journalist and author whose book Here We Go is a wonderful re-telling of Everton’s glorious 1980s days.
‘But the Liverpool fan experience in recent years has been so removed from that of Everton fans. Everton have been living through this existential crisis, wondering if we’re going to survive. In the 1980s, the fan experiences were so much more similar.’
Everton’s FA Cup exit at home to Bournemouth last weekend means the club’s wait for a trophy will go beyond 30 years. Liverpool have won 16 trophies in that time. The last Goodison derby tonight carries huge significance. Arne Slot’s side are desperate to maintain their push for the title by extending their lead to nine points. Everton, resurgent under David Moyes, know that a few slips could plunge them back into a fight for survival.
But David Moyes will be desperate for Everton to win the final Merseyside derby at Goodison Park
The winning team’s fans will get permanent bragging rights about their Goodison supremacy, with Liverpool and Everton having each won 41 derby matches at Goodison, with 37 drawn. Reminded of that on Tuesday, Moyes observed: ‘The most important thing is to get a win to keep us in the Premier League.’
The destinies of the two clubs’ local fans are intertwined, as ever. Everton’s move to a stadium on the banks of the Mersey at Bramley-Moore Dock is proving a catalyst for the most significant dockside regeneration in the city since the Albert Dock’s redevelopment in the 1980s.
Everyone in the city will benefit from the shared wealth.
Just don’t bother trying to tell that to the contemporary disseminators of bile and spite. One of them was more interested in filming Reid after he’d taken a few drinks, on Monday evening, and sharing the footage on X. Reid laughed that off, but it will have stung. More proof that no one would dare let Salah anywhere near an Everton shirt.
More proof Sir Jim is out of his depth
The coincidence of Sir Jim Ratcliffe severing relationships with almost every elite sports team he touches barely needs pointing out. The All Blacks are now suing Ineos for prematurely terminating a six-year commercial relationship.
I’ve touched on Sir Jim’s vastly over-inflated opinion of himself more than once before. If you can face wading through the book Grit, Rigour & Humour:
The Ineos Story, a tedious hagiography that Sir Jim likes to display in some of his offices, you’ll get the picture. Having let Sir Ben Ainslie know that he doesn’t rate his sailing all that much and disrespected one of the great teams in world sport, this seems like a moment for home truths.
I’m sorry, Sir Jim, but success in sport is rather more complicated than fracking. In the meantime, God help Manchester United.
Ineos are being sued by the All Blacks, and the Man United part-owner looks out of his depth
Kerr trial raises police concerns
The trial and acquittal of Sam Kerr, the Chelsea women’s footballer accused of racially harassing a Met officer, suggests the police force have lost their senses.
The jury was asked to believe that the male officer, poor flower, felt ‘alarm or harassment’ because Kerr called him ‘white and stupid’.
Wounded feelings he initially forgot to mention. Kerr immediately apologised. That should have been the end of it.
