Football these days is almost unrecognisable at times from how the game was in the 1980s.
The fundamentals remain the same of course - eleven against eleven - the ultimate aim being to get the round object into the rectangular thing.. Everton annually finding a way to make a mess of their League Cup campaign.
But there have been seismic changes since the decade which arguably more than any other ushered in the all-singing, all-dancing globally marketed product we see today, some of them for the better. Supporters are generally much safer attending matches than they were back then, most weekends there are literally dozens of televised matches from all over the world for armchair fans to enjoy rather than the handful a season audiences had to be grateful for back then, and, from a player’s perspective, their shorts are more generously cut.
Yes, video, photographic and documentary evidence from the time makes clear that back then - way before the mass-produced kits which are rolled out in triplicate season after season, much to the anguish of harassed parents - most clubs had one set of shorts to last their squad for a season which, even before the repeated washing of them week after week, left little to the imagination and would not have looked out of place on a cage dancer in Ibiza. And, were it not for a team-mate coming to the rescue of the most successful captain in Everton’s history at a particularly critical juncture, they could potentially have scuppered one of the key triumphs which set in motion Goodison’s golden age.
READ MORE: Everton have six weeks to decide their destiny as Frank Lampard challenge becomes clear
READ MORE: Rare Seamus Coleman moment sums up Everton misery as injury problems mount up
Kevin Ratcliffe grew up in a family of Evertonians, having been born in Mancot, North Wales and brought up in nearby Flintshire, regularly squeezing into a car to make the journey over to Merseyside to watch his beloved Blues. “There’d be six of us”, he recalled in Simon Hart’s ‘Here We Go - Everton in the 1980s: The Players’ Stories’. “My dad, his three brothers and the next-door neighbour. I started going the season after the 1968 Cup final. I can remember Man United playing there and George Best not getting a kick. It was a good era to grow up with. I loved watching Johnny Morrissey play, a fearless winger getting crosses in for big Joe Royle.”
Despite his admiration for those at the attacking end of the pitch, the young Welshman soon carved a reputation for himself in youth football as a defender, representing Deeside’s under-11 district team when he was only nine and getting his first taste of the hallowed Wembley turf which would become very familiar territory for him when playing for Wales Schoolboys against England in 1976, facing a future Everton team-mate in Wayne Clarke. That same year, the Blues’ youth development officer Ray Minshull took then youth-team coach Colin Harvey to Colwyn Bay to watch the talented 15-year-old in action and, although Ratcliffe went for trials with Manchester City and Tottenham, there was never any real doubt where he would end up and he signed on an an apprentice for the Toffees the following summer, before signing professional forms eighteen months later.
The pitches of Bellefield were a hard but necessary proving ground, with Harvey - who had begun his own stellar Everton career with a debut at the age of 18 in a European Cup tie against Inter Milan in the San Siro - proving a tough taskmaster. “If you’re going to play for Everton you need a mental toughness and you have to get that from the training and the coach.”, Ratcliffe admitted. “Colin would ask a lot from you but no more than he would give himself. I don’t know how old he was when we were running around playing five-a-sides but his team had to win. It was pressure and it was sorting the men from the boys. At Everton sometimes you have to have high-pressure training because the crowd are demanding, they are on top of you, and if you can’t take it from the coach you aren’t going to be taking it at Goodison.”
Ratcliffe, primarily a left-footed centre-half who could also play at full-back, was handed his debut in March 1980 at the age of 19 and successfully shackled fearsome Scottish centre forward Joe Jordan as Gordon Lee’s side earned a goalless draw and the youngster's second appearance was on an even grander stage. Although the Blues had built on Lee’s promising first half season in charge in 1976/77 when they reached the League Cup final and FA Cup semi-finals, finishing third in 1978 and then fourth a year later, the turn of the decade saw a sharp decline in league form that left the Toffees only a perilous one place and four points clear of relegation, the campaign salvaged by an FA Cup run which after victories over Aldershot, Wigan, Wrexham and Ipswich Town brought a semi-final against Second Division West Ham United at Villa Park. With Liverpool playing Arsenal in the other tie, there was the prospect of a first ever all-Merseyside final and Everton looked to fulfilling their end of the bargain when Brian Kidd put the Blues in front shortly before half time but the former Manchester United forward was sent off just after the hour mark following a tussle with Hammers’ full-back Ray Stewart, who was allowed to stay on by referee Colin Seel despite having already been booked for protesting the penalty award, and Stewart Pearson’s 71st minute equaliser meant a replay at Elland Road, Leeds.
“I got called into the squad because Brian Kidd had been sent off”, Ratcliffe recalled of a night when Frank Lampard senior, father of the current Everton manager, scored a 119th minute winner to take the Londoners into the final where Trevor Brooking’s header beat Arsenal to make them the last second-tier side to win the world’s oldest cup competition. “I thought I was going as a squad player for the experience. Joe McBride and I roomed together and we both thought Joe might be starting. We went down for lunch on the day of the game and as we got in the lift Gordon Lee walked out and he turned round and pointed at me and went, ‘You’re playing’, and then to Joe, ‘You’re not’. Before Joe could react, the lift door shut. He had his mum and down and was so disappointed. The manager had decided to put John Gidman into midfield to man-mark Alan Devonshire and put me at centre-back and Billy Wright and right-back. It worked quite well. We played well and should have had a few goals. That was my first taste of disappointment really. You wouldn’t have thought so at first because I was on a big bonus for appearance money. I was on seven hundred and fifty quid for the appearance because it was a semi-final on top of my one hundred and fifty a week. It was a massive jump.”
Despite having adapted well to being thrown in the deep end, it would be some time before Ratcliffe truly established himself in the first team despite Lee being replaced as manager in May 1981 by Howard Kendall, who returned to Goodison initially as player-manager at the age of 35 eleven years after being part of the ‘Holy Trinity’ midfield alongside Alan Ball and Colin Harvey which had inspired the club to its most-recent silverware, the 1970 league championship. Kendall had tried to sign Ratcliffe for his previous club Blackburn Rovers as a left-back and, eighteen months into his Blues’ reign, after only appearing twice in what he felt was his natural position of centre-back where he'd served his apprenticeship for Harvey's reserves, the frustrated defender put in a transfer request.
“He put me on the transfer list but in the meantime Billy Wright had a weight issue and I got another opportunity”, Ratcliffe remembered. “It was circulated that Bobby Robson at Ipswich had come in and at the PFA awards Howard also told me Stoke City had been on. He just said, ‘Come in and see me and we’ll sort out a new contract.”
The manager had previously seemed reluctant to pair two left-footed centre-backs together but bit the bullet and played Ratcliffe alongside club captain Mark Higgins when the Blues travelled to Ipswich in December 1982, a clean sheet in a 2-0 Toffees triumph convincing him it could work after all and the young Welshman’s Everton career was finally up and running. Kendall’s reign had yet to really take off though and, despite respectable league finishes of eighth and seventh in his first two seasons in charge, a dismal start to 1983/84 - not helped by Liverpool’s seemingly-endless dominance as Goodison’s trophy drought neared the mid-point of its second decade - heaped real pressure on the Blues boss, with his house graffitied by disgruntled fans and leaflets being circulated at matches demanding the removal of him and chairman Phillip Carter.
In what proved to be a season of turning points, three of the most important in Ratcliffe’s view came in early November - the same month Kendall made him club captain shortly after his 23rd birthday - in the aftermath of another demoralising derby defeat to Liverpool, who twelve months earlier had embarrassed Everton 5-0 at Goodison. In the days after a televised 3-0 loss to Joe Fagan’s reigning champions, who were already cruising to another title, Colin Harvey was promoted by Kendall to first-team coach. “It was massive for me”, Ratcliffe admitted. “I’d been with Colin from the age of sixteen right through the reserve team and he was such a good coach and an inspiration.”
Three days after the Anfield defeat, the Blues faced Coventry City in a third round League Cup tie attended by only 9,080 spectators with the malaise around Goodison only deepening when Dave Bamber put the visitors in front six minutes after half time. The introduction from the bench of midfielder Peter Reid - yet to find anything like his best form after struggling with injuries following his arrival from Bolton Wanderers the previous December - for Trevor Steven proved critical and, after Adrian Heath equalised with eleven minutes left, Graeme Sharp’s 91st minute winner took Everton in the last 16 and offered some respite from the dark clouds encircling the club, Kendall adding further experience to his squad the following day by signing 28-year-old Scottish striker Andy Gray from Wolves, whose career had seemingly plateaued after winning both the PFA Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year awards in 1977 following his move south from Dundee United.
“Andy came in and gave us belief”, Ratcliffe said. “He was similar to Reidy in his determination and his pride and what he wanted. He’d been a big star and might have seen it as his last move and tried to make the best of it. He did and it rubbed off on the other players. You have to remember how young and naive the players were and we needed people to guide us. They knew the football world not just on the field but off and we grew up quickly with those two in the side.”
Everton’s winter of discontent would get worse before it got better, a grim New Year’s Eve goalless draw with Coventry which stretched Kendall’s side’s winless run to five with only one goal scored seeing the Toffees booed off by those among the 13,659 disgruntled Blues who stayed until the end, Match of the Day with commentator Alan Parry remarking, “An angry reaction from the 13 and a half thousand faithful. How sad to see such a great club struggling. Howard Kendall is one man who will be glad to see the back of 1983.” The manager would have been far from alone in hoping the new year would being better fortunes but he had already told Ratcliffe he had a feeling it would. “After the cup game against Coventry, Howard said to me, ‘Do you know what year it is? It’s the Chinese year of the Rat. Do you what that means? This is the year.’ It wasn’t on one or two occasions, he always said it. That is what managers were in those days - they were psychologists as well, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.”
Kendall’s psychology came to the fore again as the Blues began 1984 with an FA Cup third round tie at Stoke City, the Blues boss opening the dressing room windows at the Victoria Ground beforehand so his players could hear the backing provided by the thousands of Evertonians who had travelled to the Potteries and it helped inspire a 2-0 victory to keep Everton’s domestic cup hopes alive on two fronts. Ten days later, the Blues’ League Cup aspirations were hanging by a thread as they trailed Third Division Oxford United - who had already knocked out Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester United - with time running out in their quarter-final at the Manor Ground but Kevin Brock’s famously under-hit back-pass allowed Adrian Heath to nip in for the equaliser and, after the U’s were comfortably seen off in the Goodison replay, Aston Villa were beaten over two legs in the semi-final to take Everton back to Wembley for the first time since 1977.
Their opponents would be the holders for the previous three seasons, Liverpool, and three weeks before the long-awaited first ever Wembley meeting between the Merseyside giants, Kendall’s men - without a win over their local rivals since before the manager took charge - got a psychological boost by gaining a morale-boosting draw over the treble-chasing league leaders when Alan Harper’s late equaliser secured a point at Goodison in the campaign’s second meeting between the sides. The city’s streets were deserted on Sunday 25th March 1984 as tens of thousands of Blues and Reds travelled down to the capital together with many more huddled round television sets back home to see Ratcliffe, alongside Liverpool skipper Graeme Souness, lead Everton out at the national stadium for the first of what would become an extraordinary 11 times over the next five years.
In a tightly-fought encounter played in pouring rain, the Toffees were denied a penalty early on when Alan Hansen appeared to control the ball with his hand in clearing Adrian Heath’s goal-bound effort off the line and, after an extra thirty minutes couldn’t break the fiercely-contested deadlock, Graeme Souness’ first-half effort decided the Maine Road replay three days later in Manchester. Although disappointed to be left empty-handed, Kendall’s men had proved they could compete with the side they and everyone else were looking to catch and who would end the season as European champions after sewing up a third domestic title in a row.
“I can say now we were cheated out of the game by the referee”, Ratcliffe reflected. “We always seemed to think that Liverpool got the luck against us. We realised we weren’t maybe technically as good as them yet but we unsettled them. I am not going to say it was a lucky goal but I thought it was a bit of a mis-control by Graeme Souness who turned and then shot for the winner. The bloody pitch was awful and I remember the medal was a bit disappointing as well. I took it out of the box and part of it fell off. I thought ‘Is that all we’re playing for?’ but it wasn’t the medals - it was the status.”
Although still in the bottom half of the First Division table, Everton had continued to build momentum after their stirring FA Cup opener at Stoke in January and, after needing three games to get past Third Division Gillingham in the fourth round, they beat Shrewsbury Town and Notts County to set up a semi-final with Southampton at Highbury. The Saints would finish the season as First Division runners-up only three points behind Liverpool and, with talent like Peter Shilton, Mark Wright, Frank Worthington and Danny Wallace in their side, Ratcliffe knew he and his side would have to be at the top of their game to get to Wembley again, the captain’s task not helped when he was unable to get the right pair of shorts he wanted in the dressing room before the game.
“You had to get there early to get a decent pair of shorts and then hide them in case one of the other lads got them”, he recalled. “It was the likes of me, Sharpy, Nev and Reidy. You are only talking a size thirty-eight instead of a thirty-six. We actually asked at the start of one season for them to be longer as well. You have to remember these shorts were worn every week - you wore them until they were ripped or ruined. For the semi at Highbury, I didn’t get a pair of the bigger shorts and they were too tight on me and I went in at half-time and had not had the best of games. Reidy went, ‘What the hell’s up with you today?’ I said, ‘I feel s***’. He said, ‘What do you mean, you feel sick?’ I said, ‘No, my f****** shorts are too tight, I can’t move in them’. So he took his shorts off and threw them at me and said, ‘Put them on, you t***’. The second half and extra time were a lot better.”
Liberated by his more comfortable attire, Ratcliffe - who had been booked after only eight minutes - and his defenders limited Lawrie McMenemy’s side to few clear openings but missed Everton chances and the acrobatics of England goalkeeper Shilton made another replay look likely until with, just three minutes of extra time remaining, Peter Reid’s free-kick from near the dead-ball line was flicked on by Derek Mountfield and nodded home by Adrian Heath to spark wild celebrations and a pitch invasion by the thousands of ecstatic Evertonians on the North Bank as the prospect of a second trip of the season to Wembley became a reality.
Their opponents this time would Graham Taylor’s Watford, runners-up to Liverpool the previous campaign in their first ever top-flight season but who had dropped to 11th this time around with Everton, buouyed by their cup exploits, improving to repeat their previous season’s finish of seventh. Kendall’s men went into the final as favourites but the weight of expectation on them to end the club’s 14-year trophy wait was apparent in the early stages, with Neville Southall having to produce a smart stop to deny John Barnes - who the following month would score a memorable solo goal for England against Brazil in the Maracana - before the winger again worked a shooting opportunity which was blocked by Derek Mountfield, Les Taylor’s follow-up effort being deflected away from an open goal by John Bailey’s outstretched boot. “Bails got a touch on it”, Ratcliffe insisted, “The referee didn’t see the touch and gave a goal kick. I thought that was the turning point - something had gone our way and the more successful sides seem to have that little bit more luck.”
That break of fortune helped the Toffees gradually find their feet and after Graeme Sharp put the Blues in front seven minutes before half time, spinning and shooting home off the post after Gary Stevens had returned Kevin Richardson’s half-cleared cross to the edge of the penalty area, Andy Gray doubled the advantage six minutes after the break with a forceful but fair header Trevor Steven’s right-wing delivery as goalkeeper Steve Sherwood tried in vain to claim for a foul and Everton’s long wait for a trophy - along with Kendall’s for a breakthrough triumph - was over.
“It was magical. The whole day, the whole experience was special”, Ratcliffe proudly recalled. “We'd been there a couple of months earlier for the Milk Cup final and I think that helped us against Watford. We were more relaxed than we might otherwise have been and could focus more on just winning the match. It was a fantastic moment walking up the steps to collect the Cup. I was young to be a captain and had only been given the armband in November. I was thinking 'Why am I going up here?' I would have been happy just to have been one of the lads – but that moment has also given me one of the biggest regrets of my career. Mark Higgins was still the club captain but he was injured with the hernia problem which eventually ended his career. I wish he could have come up the steps with us. If I had my time again I would ask him to come up with me. Eventually his career was finished at the age of 26 by what was basically just a hernia problem which is curable now. Back then the same thing finished Mike Pejic and Garry Stanley, while I was out for ten months with it when I was 28. Mark was at Wembley with us, but he didn't come up the steps and I've always regretted that.”
Everton’s status as FA Cup holders meant a third trip of the year to Wembley in August for the Charity Shield where, bolstered by the summer signing of £425,000 Sunderland midfield playmaker Paul Bracewell, the Blues’ struck a potential psychological blow against a Liverpool side now without their own midfield general Graeme Souness who had left to join Sampdoria in Italy by outplaying their local rivals and lifting the traditional season curtain-raiser courtesy of Bruce Grobbelaar’s own goal. Before kick off at the opening league fixture against Tottenham at Goodison the following Saturday, the two trophies the first team had acquired since last playing on home soil were paraded around the pitch along with the FA Youth Cup the club’s youngsters had won the previous May, further indication of the rude health the Toffees were in and why some supporters believed a genuine title challenge could be in the offing.
Adrian Heath’s early penalty added to the feel-good factor but Spurs, winners of the UEFA Cup the previous May and themselves harbouring championship ambitions, fought back to win 4-1, Kendall’s men being beaten in their second game as well two days later on August Bank Holiday Monday at West Bromwich Albion. Kevin Richardson’s winner in a televised fixture at Chelsea the following Friday night got the campaign up and running but the Blues’ early season form was inconsistent, high-scoring away wins at Newcastle and Watford being off-set by frustrating home draws with Ipswich and Southampton and a third defeat at Arsenal in early October. A fortnight later, Everton made the short journey across Stanley Park for the first Merseyside derby of the season in sixth place, five points behind the pace-setting Gunners, but six clear of Liverpool who were enduring their worst start to a season in years following Souness’s departure and sat only four points above bottom club Stoke, having won only two of their first ten league matches.
The Toffees were without a win at Anfield since Joe Royle and Alan Whittle had given Harry Catterick’s side a 2-0 victory during the run-in to the 1970 league championship triumph and had not won a league derby anywhere since Andy King’s unforgettable volley at Goodison six years earlier but this would be the day it became abundantly clear the balance of power on Merseyside was shifting. Kendall’s men took the game to their hosts from the start and should have been in front long before Graeme Sharp’s sensational 25-yard volley three minutes after half-time - still reckoned by many to be the Blues’ greater ever goal - put the Blues firmly in command and secured a hugely symbolic victory which should have been by a greater margin but for wasteful finishing, Ratcliffe and his defensive cohorts easily dealing with Liverpool’s increasingly desperate attempts to draw level.
“We were just on a roll at that time,” the skipper recalled. “It didn’t matter who we were playing, we just backed ourselves. Of course we were well aware of our record at Anfield before that game. The media would constantly bring it up whenever a derby came around. You try not to worry, and tell yourself that it’s just another game, but in the back of your mind it does have an effect. Howard had tried a few things when we played Liverpool. He’d played five in midfield and one up front, things like that, and it hadn’t worked. It was always a difficult game, but he always told us that we were getting closer, and that we’d beat them before too long. And at that time I felt we were a match for them, individually and collectively. There was nothing between us. He was always capable of that kind of thing, was Graeme. He could score any type of goal, and he had excellent technique. It was a hell of a goal.”
Manchester United were trounced 5-0 at Goodison the following Saturday to further outline Everton’s championship credentials and they went top of the table for the first time the following weekend with a 3-0 win over Leicester City, the seventh of what would be ten straight victories in all competitions as Kendall’s side began to purr. A shock Milk Cup exit at home to Second Division Grimsby Town sparked a run of only one win in the next six with defeats at Norwich and at home to Chelsea dropping the Blues to third just before Christmas but they would not lose again until mid-May by which time the club’s first league title in 15 years had been sown up with five games to spare and ultimately with a record tally of 90 points, on the back of an imperious 28-game unbeaten run which brought the Blues to the brink of an unprecedented treble.
The FA Cup holders saw off Leeds United, Doncaster Rovers, non-league giantkillers Telford United, Ipswich and Luton Town in a dramatic Villa Park semi-final to move within one game of retaining their trophy but, before then, the focus was Everton’s bid to win the club’s first ever European trophy. After scraping past Irish minnows University College Dublin in the first round of the Cup Winners Cup, Czechoslovakia’s Inter Bratislava and Fortuna Sittard of Holland were comfortably despatched to set up a semi-final showdown with German giants, Bayern Munich. A goalless draw in the first leg in the Olimpiastadion set things up perfectly for the Goodison return but Ratcliffe and his men knew the job was only half done against such experienced continental campaigners, managed for a second time by Udo Lattek who had returned to the club he led to the first of three successive European Cups midway through the previous decade.
Goodison was at fever pitch with the first European final in Everton’s history at stake and there was no quarter asked or given on the pitch with brutal challenges flying in from either side as they battled for supremacy, Ratcliffe admitting he still cringes at the ‘reducer’ he put in early on against Bayern's flying winger Ludwig Kogl. “It was a shocking tackle and I never even got booked for it. In those days you were notified of the players who were a danger and the idea was to take them out - as simple as that. I know that is brutal but with the left-winger for Bayern Munich, I was told to take him out. You are not going out there to break his leg or anything but the idea was he was a danger man and if he was injured, he would less of a problem than if he was fully fit.”
Ratcliffe’s efforts were still not enough to prevent Kogl playing a big part in the goal eight minutes before half time which put Bayern in front, the diminutive German playing a one-two with Lothar Matthaus which put him clean through on Neville Southall, the Welsh keeper’s block falling to Dieter Hoeness whose calm finish evaded a host of covering defenders to record the away goal which meant the Blues now needed to score twice to reach the final. At half time, Kendall told his players to keep at it, get the ball into the box and the Gwladys Street would suck the ball in for the goals they needed, and he was proven right with the Germans unable to cope with Gary Stevens’s long throws and the sheer blue passion on the pitch and in the stands. Graeme Sharp equalised three minutes after the break, nodding home at the far post after Andy Gray had flicked on a Stevens launch from the right flank and, a quarter of an hour from time, Gray put Everton in front for the first time in the tie after Belgian goalkeeper Jean-Marie Pfaff came for another long Stevens throw but missed it after being blocked by one of his own defenders enabling the Scot to gleefully thump into the empty net.
Trevor Steven put the seal on arguably Goodison’s greatest night four minutes from time, racing through to slot home in front of the Gwladys Street after a slick counter-attack led by Sheedy and Gray, as Kendall and his men celebrated the epic comeback which left out-thought and out-fought German coach Lattek complaining, “Mr Kendall, this is not football!”
“I won’t tell you what the lads on our bench said but it wasn’t very nice”, Ratcliffe admitted. “We were a nasty bunch. You needed to be. Don’t tell me Liverpool weren’t nasty when they had the likes of Graeme Souness. I had a shin pad with a hole down the middle where Souness did me once - I thought he’d broken my leg but it was just my pad. He was nasty but he could play and that was the game. You had to have a nasty streak. I don’t think there’s ever been a nice team that’s ever won the league, there’s always a bit of an edge about them and that’s what we had. We had players that could mix it.”
The final in Rotterdam proved a more sedate but no less joyous occasion. An estimated 25,000 Evertonians travelled to the Netherlands and had the time of their lives, playing football with Dutch police in the main square during the afternoon, with the only concern once the match began being how long the Toffees would take to make their clear superiority over Austrian opponents Rapid Vienna tell. A linesman's flag depriving Derek Mountfield of what would have been Ratcliffe’s centre-back partner’s 15th goal of an extraordinary scoring season meant it was still goalless at half time but, after Sharp intercepted a under-hit back-pass twelve minutes after the break to clip back for Gray to knock into the empty net, the nerves settled. Trevor Steven added a second on 72 minutes with a far-post volley after a corner had been flicked on and, although Hans Krankl halved the deficit with five minutes left, Kevin Sheedy restored the Blues’ two-goal advantage seconds later to secure the Toffees’ long-awaited first European silverware well over twenty years after their first continental campaign.
“It was a comfortable three-one in the end”, Ratcliffe recalled. “We were all switched on and the best player they had was Hans Krankl, who was well past it. For Bayern Munich home and away and Rapid Vienna, I can’t really thunk of one player having a bad game. That is something - when you can’t remember anyone having a bad moment in those games. My brother was there and my dad and my uncle Graham, and one of my aunties. I couldn’t believe it when I saw how many fans travelled - there were twenty-five thousand, they were jumping up and down in the stand and it was just bouncing. To see those fans there, it was ‘Wow’. It was like a home game for us.”
The celebrations continued long into the night as Everton flew straight back from the Netherlands with the FA Cup final against Manchester United only three days away and, in the eyes of many, the lack of sufficient recovery time proved crucial. Despite being the better side for much of the game, Peter Reid hitting the post with a first-half volley, Kendall’s men were unable to make the breakthrough even after United’s Irish defender Kevin Moran became the first player ever to be sent off in the FA Cup final for a professional foul on Reid and Norman Whiteside’s curling extra-winner shattered the Blues’ treble dreams.
“I know Sharpy and Andy Gray turned around and said they couldn’t feel their legs but I didn’t feel knackered”, Ratcliffe said. "I didn’t feel the way we played showed we were knackered. We never put the chances away. The biggest thing was the sending-off changed it. Sharpy and Andy were dominating the two centre-backs but then Frank Stapleton went back there and he was outstanding.”
Hundreds of thousands of people turned out the following day for a homecoming parade to salute a truly magnificent season with thoughts already beginning to turn to Everton’s chances of building on their success in Europe the following season. But, before the month was out, those ambitions lay in tatters after crowd trouble and a charge across the terraces of Brussels’ dilapidated Heysel stadium by Liverpool supporters before their side’s European Cup final against Juventus led to the deaths of 39 of the Italian club’s fans. Within days, all English clubs were banned indefinitely from European competition, a wholly unfair punishment for Everton and the other teams who had qualified over an incident that had nothing to do with.
“It was a disappointing time”, Ratcliffe admitted. “We felt we had a good enough squad to go on. It’s not to say we would have won things but we wouldn’t have had a better chance, put it that way. I don’t think we got enough support - I don’t think Maggie Thatcher helped football. She wanted us out of Europe because it was too much of a problem for her. It was just a shame and I was disappointed that after the ban we weren’t invited back in as a gesture of good faith.”
Keen to maintain Everton’s domestic dominance, Kendall reacted during the summer by signing Leicester City’s Gary Lineker, rapidly emerging as one of the best goal-getters in the country, for a club record £800,000 and - despite an indifferent and injury-hit start to the 1985/86 campaign - by late February the Blues were looking a good bet to retain their title, with an 2-0 victory at Anfield opening up an eight-point lead for the table-topping Toffees over Liverpool.
It was a memorable day for Ratcliffe as he opened the scoring a quarter of an hour before time with what proved to be only the second - and final - goal of his 459-game Everton career, with a speculative effort from 35 yards which squirmed comically through the grasp of Bruce Grobbelaar.
“It must have been the backspin I put on the strike that fooled him,” he later joked. “Every year it gets five yards longer! But seriously, it wasn’t the best goal I’ve ever seen in a derby but memorable to me because I only scored two goals in my Everton career. It just opened up a little bit and all of a sudden there was an opportunity. I think we were playing with a tango ball, which was quite light in those days, and so there was an opportunity if you caught the ball right. It was a bad strike but it was bouncing that many times before it got to him I thought he was just going to walk over and pick it up. But he seemed to dive on it, and with it being so easy he maybe just relaxed in concentration. That’s when you’re at your most vulnerable.”
But Liverpool, now under the guidance of player-manager Kenny Dalglish who had taken over from Joe Fagan the previous summer, embarked on a run of 11 wins and a draw in the final dozen matches as Everton - hindered by the loss of Neville Southall, the previous season’s Football Writers' Player of the Year and at the time arguably the best goalkeeper on the planet, after he tore ankle ligaments playing for Wales in a friendly in Dublin - slipped up with a defeat at Luton along with draws against Chelsea, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest allowing their neighbours to cut the gap. The decisive moment came in the final week of the league campaign when Kendall’s men travelled to relegation-haunted Oxford United and, with Lineker’s scoring touch deserting him after his lucky boots weren’t packed for the trip to the Manor Ground, Les Phillips’s late winner handed the initiative to Liverpool, who won at Leicester the same night, and meant victory in their final game at Chelsea saw them regain the title.
The Blues had the chance to gain revenge - and reward for another high-quality campaign - the following week at Wembley where victories over Exeter City, Blackburn Rovers, Tottenham, Luton and Sheffield Wednesday had taken Kendall’s men to a third successive FA Cup final, the first played between the two Merseyside giants. But, despite double Footballer of the Year Lineker scoring the 40th goal of what proved to be his only season at Goodison midway through the first half, Liverpool fought back after the break to win 3-1 and clinch only the third league and FA Cup double that century (and fifth ever), the Toffees falling heartbreakingly two games short of that historic accomplishment themselves.
“We should have won it”, Ratcliffe reflected, “but it just seemed to be the way things were going against Liverpool. It seemed they were getting that bit of extra luck we weren’t quite getting. It was a bit unfair on Bobby Mimms but how many points did Nev win us and how many games did he get us through? We knew in that period if we finished above Liverpool we’d win the league and I’m sure they felt the same. It was good for the city, which was really on a low at the time, and gave people something to be proud of.”
Kendall’s hopes of regaining Everton’s supremacy were not helped by the departure of Lineker - who won the Golden Boot during that summer’s World Cup in Mexico during England’s run to the quarter-finals - to Barcelona for £2.8m and another early season injury crisis. But the shrewd investment of some of the Lineker windfall that summer in a new centre-back partner for Ratcliffe in £1.1m Norwich defender Dave Watson and Manchester City’s veteran left back Paul Power as well as, the following February, Birmingham striker Wayne Clarke proved masterstrokes. Despite trailing Liverpool by nine points in mid-March, a seven-game winning run as Dalglish’s side faltered saw the Blues regain their league title with two games to spare and by an eventual nine-point winning margin, an achievement Ratcliffe felt was even more remarkable than the 1985 success due to the problems encountered over the course of the campaign.
“It was a bit more satisfying”, Ratcliffe - who was the only ever-present that campaign - maintained. “Some games you’d look at the team and think, ‘Did we win it with that side?’ Wayne Clarke came in and was excellent, a great finisher, his goal at Arsenal was as good as you’ll see, chipping John Lukic from forty yards. We’d heard questions about Wayne, that he wasn’t good in the changing room, a bit of a loner, but far from it. He bought into it and I think Howard told him he had to. A great lad and you could actually say he had an effect on Everton Football Club as much as Andy Gray had with the goals he scored and the way he was. A completely different player but still very effective, and that was Howard bringing people in.
“Dave Watson became my favourite defensive partner. He had a little bit more technically than Mark Higgins and Derek Mountfield and I could rely on Dave more if I made a mistake. When he first came in, if you had a number nine on your back he followed you over the place. It was really a case of educating him to the way we played and the best thing that happened to him was he got injured, which allowed him to watch from the stand how we marked zonally and passed players on. We knew what a good player and great lad he was and I’ve never seen a team that wanted someone to succeed so much.”
The Blues’ latest domestic success however was not enough to thwart the European ambitions felt by the manager and several of his squad which were still being hampered by the Heysel ban which showed no sign of ending and would last for another three years. Kendall left that summer to manage Athletic Bilbao in Spain - his number two Colin Harvey being promoted to take his place - and key players like Gary Stevens and Trevor Steven would soon leave for Glasgow Rangers, who weren’t subject to the ban, to begin a gradual decline in both the club and Ratcliffe’s fortunes.
The Welshman admitted he was never the same player after a hernia problem in January 1988 which took nine months to recover from and removed his blistering pace, one of his greatest assets, with Harvey’s attempts to emulate Kendall’s successes hampered by the calibre of his signings. “I remember going through my rehabilitation with the physio and he was out sprinting me. I just didn’t have that gear. All of a sudden what was natural wasn’t there any more. It was mentally demoralising because I was working harder than I ever had before, doing twelve-minute runs before training and I’d been the worst runner in the world at long distance. I was trying everything to get my pace back and was so tired I was sleeping for a lot longer in the afternoons.
“But it was shifting after Heysel. We couldn’t attract the players and our better players wanted to go. I think Reidy going and not being replaced with the same quality - if not better - was massive. We were bringing in players that were good but not quite good enough. Colin was too much of a coach maybe and I don’t think his signings were brilliant. I don’t think the team spirit was the same, it seemed to be them and us. They didn’t seem to want to do it our way. These lads came in on good wages, a lot better than the lads that were already there.”
Harvey’s side reached the League Cup semi-finals in 1988 and the following year a fourth FA Cup final in six seasons before narrowly losing 3-2 to Liverpool after extra time in an occasion overshadowed by the Hillsborough tragedy six weeks earlier in which 97 Reds supporters were unlawfully killed in Britain’s worst ever sporting disaster. “We were going into a game we had no chance of winning even if we won it”, Ratcliffe admitted. “We were the villains before we started. It was a good spectacle with some fantastic goals but it was tough and harder to take than the first time we lost to them at Wembley. We weren’t the same Liverpool and Everton sides as three or four years earlier. There were some great players in the sides still - Peter Beardsley, Nev - but the clubs weren’t where they would have been if it wasn’t for Heysel.”
Although Harvey’s side could only finish fourth, eighth and then sixth in 1989/90, a winless start to the following campaign saw the Goodison legend sacked in late October with Kendall - who had joined Manchester City after his time in Spain - returning for a second spell at the Goodison helm, Harvey resuming his number two role alongside his old boss and midfield partner.
But, with Martin Keown having arrived the previous year to provide further competition for Ratcliffe - now approaching 30 and having to further adapt his game to make up for his injury-diminished speed, the Welshman now regrets not pursuing the opportunities which existed at the time for him to play abroad. “Looking back, I should have pushed for a move but I was so determined to get back in. Howard said to me when he came back, ‘I’ll get it right’. I said to him, ‘You won’t, it’s too far gone’.”
The tensions within the club even bled into the relationship between manager and captain, an admittedly-stubborn Ratcliffe refusing to play sweeper in the FA Cup fifth round second replay over Liverpool in February 1991 after being overlooked for the role in the previous week’s epic 4-4 draw between the sides. Dave Watson’s goal sent the Blues through to the quarter-finals but they were beaten at Second Division West Ham, weeks later losing 4-1 to Crystal Palace at Wembley in the Zenith Data Systems Cup final and finishing the league season in ninth - the club’s lowest finish since Kendall’s first arrival ten years earlier - to show Ratcliffe’s prediction to Kendall on his return was sadly likely to prove correct.
The Welshman brought down the curtain on his twelve-year Everton career with a move to Dundee in the spring of 1992 and finished his playing days with brief spells at Nottingham Forest, Derby County and Chester City. He took over as manager at the Deva Stadium in 1995 and guided them to the Division Three play-offs in 1997, helping keep the struggling then fourth-tier club afloat through serious financial difficulties, even paying a £5,000 water bill himself at one point as the club’s cheques were being refused.
He then spent four years managing Shrewsbury Town, leading them to a famous FA Cup third round giant-killing in January 2003 over an Everton side managed by former Shrews player David Moyes but was unable to prevent them being relegated from the Football League at the end of that season and left the club soon afterwards. Since then, he has become a regular contributor and analyst for BBC Wales Sport, as well as an after-dinner speaker, where his enduring love for Everton is never far from the surface for a man who remains the most recent to hold the league championship trophy for the Blues, an accolade he is proud of but would be delighted to one day be rid of.
“It is nice to have that title. But nobody will be prouder if somebody can come in and win the league again with Everton.”
