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Toffees Stick Together, Gorey (2026)

13/06/2026

John Connolly, the Barrhead-born outside-left, and as a Toffees fan you'll know his Goodison story is pure 1970s Everton drama.

The basics
• Born: 13 June 1950, Barrhead, Scotland
• Position: outside left / left winger
• Clubs: St Johnstone (1968-1972), Everton (1972-1976), Birmingham City (1976-1978), Newcastle United, Hibernian, Gateshead, Blyth Spartans — 344 league apps, 84 goals in total
Everton years (1972-1976)

Harry Catterick really did haul himself out of a sick bed to get the deal done in March 1972 — £75,000 to St Johnstone was big money then, and Catterick's determination became part of the legend.

At Goodison he made 108 league appearances and scored 16 goals.
While he was a Blue:
• he won his only full Scotland cap, away to Switzerland in Bern on 22 June 1973 (a 1-0 friendly defeat), having already picked up four Under-23 caps
• he suffered two separate leg breaks — both serious setbacks that disrupted his pace-based game
• when Catterick left and Billy Bingham took over, the relationship never clicked. Connolly eventually asked out

The move away, September 1976, Birmingham City paid £90,000 to take him to St Andrew's. He spent two seasons there (57 league games, 9 goals), then went on to Newcastle and Hibs — famously lining up alongside George Best at Easter Road.

Later he became a successful manager, leading Queen of the South to the Scottish Second Division title in 2001-02 and the Challenge Cup the next year, before a brief return to St Johnstone.

It's a classic tale of what might have been at Everton — Catterick saw him as the natural width on the left, but injuries and a managerial change meant Goodison never saw the best of that Barrhead winger for long.
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12/06/2026

A chaotic start to 2026

Co-hosts Mexico kicked off the World Cup with a 2-0 win over South Africa at a packed Estadio Azteca, but the scoreline only tells half the story. Three players were dismissed — two for Bafana Bafana, who finished with nine men, and one for El Tri in stoppage time.

Brazilian referee Wilton Sampaio was at the centre of it, sending off South Africa's Yaya Sithole for a last-man foul, then Themba Zwane for violent conduct after cuffing Roberto Alvarado, before showing Mexico defender Cesar Montes red for a late challenge.

To put that in context: the entire Qatar 2022 tournament produced only four red cards, and no World Cup opener had ever seen three dismissals before — the previous record was two.

Early breakthrough

Mexico fed off the 80,000-strong home crowd in Mexico City and struck after just nine minutes. A loose pass from Sithole was pounced on by Erik Lira, who fed Julián Quiñones — his low drive squeezed straight through captain Ronwen Williams' legs.

Quiñones, fresh from a 33-goal season in Saudi Arabia, looked the most dangerous player on the pitch and set the tone for Javier Aguirre's side.

Red mist and relief

The game opened up five minutes after the restart when Sithole, already at fault for the goal, hauled down Brian Gutiérrez as he broke clear. It was an obvious denial of a goalscoring opportunity and Sampaio had no hesitation.

Mexico finally made the numbers count in the 67th minute. Alvarado swung in a cross from the left and 35-year-old Raúl Jiménez — playing in his fourth World Cup — rose to power a header inside the far post for his first ever finals goal. He looked emotional as he celebrated, a big moment after his long recovery from a fractured skull.

South Africa's night got worse when Zwane was dismissed in the 84th minute, leaving them with nine, before Montes saw red at the death (92') to leave Mexico with ten.
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11/06/2026

Tom Gracie was a Glasgow-born centre-forward whose short peak coincided exactly with the outbreak of the First World War, and whose story became emblematic of the pressure put on footballers to enlist.

Born on 12 June 1889 at 40 Edmund Street, Dennistoun, Glasgow, to Robert Gracie (1848-1911), a flesher, and Harriet Bell (1854-1921)
Trained in bookkeeping, worked as a meat salesman.
Died of leukemia on 23 October 1915, aged 26, at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow. Buried Craigton Cemetery, plot P 107

Football career in brief
• Juniors: Shawfield, then Strathclyde
• 1907: turned League with Airdrieonians
• Short spells: Hamilton Academical, Arthurlie
• 1910: Morton
• 1911: named Scotland reserve vs England at Goodison Park, didn't play, but signed for Everton straight after the match
• 1912: crossed Merseyside to Liverpool in a swap that sent Harold Uren to Everton, Gracie and Bill Lacey the other way. Never nailed down a place at Anfield
• 1914: returned to Scotland, feeling "unappreciated" in England, and joined Heart of Midlothian The war season with Hearts
1914-15 was Hearts' famous title-chasing side.

• Public opinion, led by philanthropist Frederick Charrington, attacked professional football as immoral while soldiers died. A Scottish FA motion to postpone was defeated, but the shaming campaign targeted stars, and Gracie, as the league's leading scorer for the league leaders, was an obvious one
• On 25 November 1914, Gracie and 10 Hearts teammates enlisted together in Sir George McCrae's volunteer battalion, Edinburgh's second pals battalion, later the 16th Royal Scots, the first "footballer's battalion"
• Army training was added to football training. Hearts went 20 games unbeaten from October to February, but 10-hour night marches before matches wore them down
• Form collapsed, key enlisted players missed games, defeats to St Mirren and Morton let Celtic overtake them to win by 4 points
• Gracie still finished joint top scorer in Scotland on 29 goals, level with Ayr United's James Richardson Illness and death
• Diagnosed with leukemia in March 1915, told only Hearts manager John McCartney
• Ignored medical advice and kept playing and training, scoring 4 goals that month
• Went south with the battalion to Ripon in June 1915, quickly broke down, hospitalized in Leeds, then moved back to Scotland
• 1915 was a dark year for the family: brother John and brother-in-law Tommy were also killed in the war

It's the classic Hearts story, a team that chose enlistment over criticism, led the league, lost it through exhaustion, and lost their star striker not to the trenches but to disease.

11/06/2026

Joe Parkinson, born on 11 June 1971.

The combative midfielder worked his way up in the lower divisions with Wigan Athletic and AFC Bournemouth before Everton snapped him up for £250,000 on 28 December 1993 — right in the brief spell when the club had no manager, after Howard Kendall left and before Mike Walker arrived. He made 107 appearances in the Premier League for Everton and scored four goals.

He became a real Goodison favourite as a central part of Joe Royle's gritty "Dogs of War" team. His biggest day came in 1995 when he earned an FA Cup winner's medal after Everton's famous 1-0 win over Manchester United in the final.

Joe Parkinson's career unraveled with a knee injury that dogged him through 1996-97. He broke down in April 1997 and missed the rest of that season, then the whole of 1997-98. After two operations and another full year out in 1998-99, he never regained full fitness. He retired in November 1999 at only 28, two years after his last first-team game. Despite the short career, his commitment was recognized with a testimonial against Manchester City in 2000.
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11/06/2026

Love him or loathe him Gary Lineker — and he did it in style.

Lineker was an Everton player for that one electric season 1985-86 — he joined from Leicester in the summer of 1985 and hit 30 league goals in 41 games.

A year later he went to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico still wearing royal blue, and:

• scored six times for England, winning the Golden Boot as the tournament's top scorer
• his first World Cup finals goals came on 11 June 1986 — a first-half hat-trick against Poland (3-0), followed by two against Paraguay and one against Argentina

Only after that summer did Barcelona come calling — the Wikipedia entry notes he was signed "after winning the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup".

Everton's own international records list him with 11 England caps and 9 goals while contracted to the club in 1985-86 — those nine include the six from Mexico.

No earlier Blue had found the net at a World Cup finals:
• Alex Parker (Scotland 1958) and Ray Wilson (England 1966) both went to tournaments as Evertonians but didn't score • Alan Ball was at Everton in 1970 but didn't score in Mexico • the next Everton scorer after Lineker was Kevin Sheedy for Ireland in 1990
So the first Toffee to score on the biggest stage was Gary Lineker, in that Poland hat-trick in Guadalajara. It kicked off a run that still makes him England's joint-record World Cup scorer.
Gary Lineker
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10/06/2026

11 June 1958.

Alex Parker and Scotland: An International Career Cut Short

Alex Parker earned 15 caps for Scotland national football team between 1955 and 1958, establishing himself as one of the finest right-backs of his generation. He won his first international cap against Portugal national football team in May 1955 while still a player with Falkirk F.C. and quickly became a regular in the Scottish defence.

In 1958, becoming the first Everton player to take part in the final stages of a World Cup Final, Parker was selected for Scotland's squad for the 1958 FIFA World Cup. At just 22 years of age, he was already regarded as one of Scotland's premier defenders and travelled to Sweden as part of a talented squad that included Dave Mackay, Tommy Docherty and Bobby Collins. Parker made his only World Cup appearance in Scotland's 3–2 defeat to Paraguay national football team during the group stage.

Remarkably, that match against Paraguay proved to be Parker's final Scotland appearance. Despite being only 22 and about to embark on the most successful years of his club career with Everton F.C., he was never selected again for the national side. This decision has long been viewed as one of Scottish football's great selection mysteries. Former Everton and Scotland teammate Alex Young later described the omission as "perverse", arguing that Parker remained the best player in his position for years afterwards.

The timing makes the decision even more puzzling. Shortly after the World Cup, Parker joined Everton and became a cornerstone of the side that won the 1962–63 Football League First Division title. Renowned for his elegance, positional sense and composure on the ball, he was widely considered among the finest full-backs during the early 1960s.

Alongside his full international appearances, Parker also represented the Scottish Football League XI on nine occasions, reflecting the high regard in which he was held throughout Scottish football.

Today, Alex Parker's international career is remembered not only for his 15 Scotland caps and World Cup appearance, but also for the enduring question of why a player considered by many to be Scotland's outstanding right-back disappeared from the national team before reaching his peak.
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10/06/2026

Born 10 June 1959, Carlo Ancelotti arrived at Goodison with serious pedigree. Everton appointed him on 21 December 2019 on a four-and-a-half-year deal, and he watched the Arsenal game from the stands before taking charge. His first game was Boxing Day against Burnley, and it could not have been tidier — a 1-0 home win sealed by Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s late header.

The first half-season was pure Everton drama. On 1 March 2020, the Blues thought they had beaten Manchester United late on, only for VAR to rule out the winner for offside. Ancelotti went to speak to referee Chris Kavanagh after the whistle, was shown red, and the FA charged him with misconduct the next day. He steadied the side through the restart, and Everton closed the pandemic-hit campaign in 12th place.

The summer of 2020 felt different. Ancelotti reunited with two old favourites — James Rodríguez and Allan — and added real legs with Abdoulaye Doucouré, plus Ben Godfrey, Niels Nkounkou and loan keeper Robin Olsen to freshen the squad. It clicked instantly. Everton won their first seven games in all competitions in 2020-21, their best start in over a century, and Ancelotti picked up September's Manager of the Month after beating Tottenham, West Brom and Palace. The high did not last all winter — United knocked Everton out of the EFL Cup 2-0 in the quarter-final just before Christmas — and results wobbled in the new year. Still, Calvert-Lewin hit 21 goals and Everton finished a respectable 10th.

That two-season stretch summed up Ancelotti at Everton: big-name glamour, a fast start, VAR chaos, and enough promise to make you believe — even if the table never quite matched the mood.
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10/06/2026

Arrival at a changing Everton

Born 10 June 1964, Stuart McCall signed for Everton in the summer of 1988, just as the club's great mid-1980s team was coming apart. That side had won Everton's first league title in 15 years and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1984-85, but the Heysel Stadium disaster led UEFA to ban English clubs from Europe on 2 June 1985, a suspension that lasted five years. The ban helped trigger the slow decline at Goodison Park that McCall walked into.

Immediate impact

His debut could hardly have been brighter — a 4-0 home win over Newcastle United in Division One on 27 August 1988 at Goodison Park, played in front of 41,560. It was also Tony Cottee's debut day, and the new striker grabbed a hat-trick.

A few months later McCall was back at his old ground, Valley Parade, for a League Cup fourth-round tie. Bradford City knocked Everton out 3-1 on 14 December 1988.

First season numbers

In 1988-89 he was a regular without finding the net in the league — 33 appearances in total, 29 starts and 4 as sub, 0 goals.

Wembley heroics

He had scored only once for Everton all season before the FA Cup Final, but came off the bench at Wembley on 20 May 1989 to produce one of the great individual cup-final cameos.

Liverpool led through John Aldridge after four minutes and held that advantage until the 90th minute, when substitute McCall equalised. The game went to extra time, and McCall struck again to level at 2-2. The final finished 3-2 to Liverpool after extra time, with Ian Rush scoring twice for Liverpool and McCall netting both Everton goals.

Three years on Merseyside

McCall pulled on an Everton shirt once more at Valley Parade when former Bradford teammate Mark Ellis invited him to bring a team for his testimonial.

Across three seasons he made 103 league appearances for the Blues and, while at Goodison, won his first Scotland caps — he would go on to represent Scotland from 1990 to 1998.

Silverware never arrived. Everton finished 8th in 1988-89 with 54 points, 6th in 1989-90, and 9th in 1990-91 — eighth, sixth and ninth in successive years.

The nearest he came, aside from that 1989 final, was the 1989-90 campaign, when Everton topped the table in late autumn and stayed in the title race deep into spring, before a poor run-in dropped them to sixth.
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09/06/2026

Remembering Billy Bingham (5 August 1931 – 9 June 2022). A title-winner with Everton in 1962-63, he scored 26 in 98 games for the Blues, then returned a decade later to take charge at Goodison from May 1973 to January 1977.
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08/06/2026

Saturday, 8 June 1968

England secured third place at Euro 1968 with a 2–0 victory over the Soviet Union in Rome, thanks in no small part to an Everton-inspired defence. Three members of the World Cup holders' back four were Toffees stars — Ray Wilson, Tommy Wright, and captain Brian Labone. Their resolute display kept the Soviets at bay as England ended the tournament on a high and claimed the bronze medal in the Italian capital.
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