Introduction
'When we won the Championship in 1938/39 our average age then was, what, about 24, 25? When you think of the players we had there, it was pure football personified, five-a-side rolled into eleven, and every player played for each other, and every player helped each other.'
Tommy Lawton (1991)
IN AUGUST 1939, EVERTON FOOTBALL CLUB KICKED OFF THEIR defence of the League Championship with a match at Goodison Park against Brentford. The previous season the club had upset the odds to see off all comers and secure the title in a style befitting a club dubbed The School of Science. With a well-honed blend of up-and-coming international stars and seasoned pros in the squad, expectations were high of more silverware to come to Merseyside.
The title-winning season marked the denouement of the most dramatic decade the club had ever - or ever has - experienced. No era in the near-150-year history of Everton can match the 1930s for peaks and troughs. The club entered the decade with a futuristic-looking kit, having ditched the orthodox lace-up neck apparel for an athletic-looking ensemble in a paler shade of blue. Maybe this break with tradition was a bad omen, as the 1929/30 season proved to be a footballing disaster for the Toffees. Four defeats over the festive period pushed the team into a relegation fight which, with Dixie Dean constantly battling injury, they were ill-equipped to handle.
Six consecutive defeats through March into April would prove crucial. Jock Thomson, Ben Williams and Tommy Johnson were signed in a late bid to stave off relegation; all would prove to be astute acquisitions, but they came too late to save the season. The 35 points accumulated were insufficient to beat the drop, resulting in the ignominy of relegation for the first time in the club's history.
The Blues bounced back in fine style in 1930/31, with Thomson, Williams and Johnson soon being joined in the team by Charlie Gee, a promising young centre-half secured from Stockport County. The fit-again Dixie Dean netted 39 times in the league, and was ably supported by the likes of Ted Critchley, Jimmy Dunn and Jimmy Stein. Everton topped the table on 25 October and remained there until the season's end, 121 goals scored pushing the Toffees to the Second Division title at the first attempt.
Five wins on the bounce early in the 1931/32 season sent a message that the Blues would be a competitive force back in the First Division. Indeed, for all but a couple of weeks, the club sat at the pinnacle of the table throughout the season. Back to his irresistible best, Dean netted 45 times in 38 League outings, with his forward foil Tommy Johnson on 22 goals and the ever-versatile Tom White on eighteen, as Everton claimed a fourth league crown.
As reigning champions in 1932/33, Everton's league form was erratic, with the team unable to string together a meaningful sequence of wins. A disappointing mid-table finish was offset by better fortunes in the FA Cup, where Everton defeated Lancastrian rivals Manchester City 3-0 in the final, a game notable as being the first final in which players donned numbered shirts (1-11 for Everton, 12-22 for City). With Dean the first player to wear the number nine in such a high-profile encounter, it helped to enshrine the mystique of the number for the Toffees' centre-forward position, which continues to this day.
As has been the case throughout Everton's history, however, the club was unable to sustain a period of success and create a dynasty. Injuries returned to hamper Dean while some of the side's veterans began to be eased out of the team. Irishmen Alex Stevenson and Jack Coulter came in to replace Johnson and Jimmy Stein early in 1934 - and thrilled the Toffees cognoscenti until the latter suffered a badly-broken leg in March 1935. Jimmy Dunn, meanwhile, lost his place to Lancastrian Jimmy Cunliffe, who had joined the Blues from non-league Adlington. Wirral lad Joe Mercer would challenge the dependable Jock Thomson for the left-half position. The mercurial Torry Gillick was tempted down from Ibrox and gave Albert Geldard strong competition for the outside-right berth. In spite of some expensive acquisitions, the revamped team did not quite gel. Four seasons of mid-table mediocrity confirmed that the Blues' team was less than the sum of its expensively acquired parts.
Everton bucked the trend of employing a de-facto team manager (in the mould of Herbert Chapman at Arsenal). Instead, the directorate selected the team, in consultation with the trainer and secretary - sometimes with club captain Dean having a say. Under the stewardship of the venerable Will Cuff, it was falling behind the times. That said, they continued to identify and sign promising youngsters - notably T.G. Jones and Tommy Lawton who arrived within nine months of each other. Both were given sustained spells in the side during the troubled 1937/38 season, in which the spectre of relegation returned to shroud Goodison. Wally Boyes, an experienced left-winger brought in as successor to Jack Coulter, and Norman Greenhalgh, a relatively raw left-back from New Brighton, were mid-season additions to the squad. A less heralded arrival was Harry Catterick, a young centre-forward from Stockport - his influence would be felt off the pitch a few decades later.
The recall of Jock Thomson, after nearly two years of yeoman service to the reserve-team, and the return of Billy Cook to the defence, gave the team hitherto elusive solidity and gave it the platform to climb away from danger in the spring of 1938. The finishing position was fourteenth - deceptively comfortable as it was just three points above the two relegated sides. Dixie Dean had left the club in March 1938, but his successor, the strapping Lawton, had ended the season as the highest scorer in the land, netting 28 times - a remarkable total for a teenager plying his trade in a struggling side. Although there were a few reasons to be cheerful, with the late-season improvement and the blossoming of Lawton and T.G. Jones, few, if any, could foresee the Toffees mounting challenge for honours when football recommenced in the late summer of 1938.
Bonded by a run to the final in the Empire Exhibition tournament, staged in Glasgow in May, the team clicked. An injury sustained in the final played at Ibrox had seen Jimmy Cunliffe replaced by Stan Bentham when the league season got under way. Thus, the team had fantastic balance - with Ted Sagar entering his peak years between the posts, Greenhalgh and Cook offering bite and solidity at the back and a half-back line combining the strength and nous of Thomson with Mercer's boundless energy and Jones' creativity and flair. Aside from Lawton, the forward line was diminutive, but Gillick, Stevenson and Boyes had the skill, acumen and trickery to perfectly complement the big man, while Stan Bentham foraged relentlessly, and also chipped in with some important goals.
Lawton picked up where he had left off in the previous season, scoring eight in the first six matches, as Everton made a perfect start to the campaign. Impressive wins at Stamford Bridge and Villa Park made the critics sit up and take notice. Lawton, T.G. Jones and Joe Mercer were rewarded with caps as the Toffees competed with Derby County and, later, Wolverhampton Wanderers for the league title. This was a settled team, with changes only made when necessitated by injuries or international call-ups for the likes of Cook, Mercer, T.G. Jones and Lawton.
Home form was imperious with just one defeat at Goodison Park all season. Some of the football served up was sublime - with, by T.G. Jones' admission, the players not having to break sweat, at times, such was their dominance. Even when the team was misfiring, Lawton's goals would see the side to two points. If the team had an Achilles heel it was on the road, where the fluid short passing game was ill-suited to some sub-standard pitches in the winter period. However, on the run-in, some stirring away performances secured vital points to hold off the challenge of Wolves. The title was effectively secured over Easter when the Blues won three matches played over just four days. A brief stutter near the end was not enough to surrender the lead and the title was secured with two matches to spare.
Could this great team of Lawton, Sagar, Jones, Mercer and company finally provide the basis for an era of Everton dominance? There was every indication that the club had found the perfect blend for a successful future. Lawton was still aged just 19 when he marked the kick-off of the 1939/40 season at Goodison on 26 August with a goal against Brentford. Jones was 21, Torry Gillick 24, Alex Stevenson 27, Mercer 25; Sagar a relative veteran at 29. Two days later Lawton scored the winner against Aston Villa, which he followed up with a brace against Blackburn Rovers the following Saturday. These were to be the last official goals he scored for Everton (and would soon be expunged from official records).
The following morning, just eight days after the new season kicked off, with Everton fifth, Neville Chamberlain's British government declared war in the wake of Germany's invasion of Poland. Domestic football competitions were suspended with immediate effect. Although alternative wartime league and cup tournaments were soon instigated, a ball would not be kicked in the Football League for seven years. It bore close parallels with 1915 when Everton were reigning league champions and football was halted by the First World War.
Time waits for no man - or team - and, when regular...
