A sticky love for the Toffees

One Club, One Life - as a slogan and an ideal, it is something the GAA and plenty of other sporting organisations would pitch as their raison d’etre, an expression of who they are and where you’re from all neatly rolled up into a tidy bundle of parochialism and local rivalry. Perfect says you!

It is what makes the GAA Club Championships, soon reaching their climax, so special - the idea of pride of place driving sporting excellence on a grand scale and you only had to witness the excitement  generated by Ballinamore Sean O’Heslins reaching the LGFA All-Ireland Intermediate Club Final to know that it definitely is no marketing slogan.

The GAA take immense pride in the status of the club at the heart of their organisation, sometimes leading to a mildly contemptuous view among a minority of those whose sporting passions are elsewhere, be it soccer, rugby, athletics or basketball but believe me, pride in a club isn’t confined to the GAA - they’re just better at expressing it! But it did get me thinking about how we Irish choose which English soccer teams to support - after all, it is not a ‘local’ thing but rather a choice.

More lows than highs in 2023

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How that choice is made is the question - some of it comes down to family tradition, more  follow the most successful club when they are at that impressionable age of around ten years of age and some of it still comes down to maybe an Irish connection with the club, all of which are understandable.

Proof of the pudding is the generation of Irish Aston Villa fans who grew up cheering the Birmingham side thanks to a great team in the nineties, populated by four Irish legends in McGrath, Houghton, Townsend and Staunton and the same goes for the Gunner squad that featured Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton and David O'Leary of the late 70s and the various Irish brigades at Liverpool and Manchester United.

My team, for better but all too often worse, is Everton, a team with deep rooted Irish links but who have been overtaken on these shores by their Red neighbours and United up the road. Once upon a time, Everton were the Irish team when Peter Farrell and Tommy Eglington joined them in the late 40s, early 50s but nowadays, Toffee fans on these shores are almost an endangered species, tormented by more successful neighbours, once great Kings left behind in the revolution of the Premier League.

Everyone in our house is a Toffee and that's all down to my Dad - he went to school over in Liverpool and they were let out to games in Goodison so that's where the connection with the Toffees was forged, a connection that saw myself and the brother Eoghan convert our cousin Shane to the Toffees - much to the chagrin of his Man Utd supporting brother and father but Shane is a die-hard Toffee to this day!

Following the Toffees is one of those things we do as a family - phone calls and messages fly all   as my dad, my brother and I watch the game in three different places all over the country while even my Mam and two sisters have been sucked into our Everton devotion as any bit of news is swiftly shared on WhatsApp or in a phone call - although my mother has never been allowed forget the time she fell asleep during a game in Goodison Park!!! 

But the proud Cavan and Dublin supporter that she is, Mam simply puts that down to soccer not being as exciting as Gaelic football!

Sometimes I wonder if I was cursed to follow the Toffees - growing up, most of my schoolmates were Liverpool, Arsenal, Man U or Chelsea fans but I’ve never regretted it one bit. Those famous last day escapes from relegation only reinforced the bond rather than weakening them.

There have been glory days in the 80s, a glorious period when Howard Kendall's fabulous team stood toe to toe with legendary teams to win two League titles, the European Cup Winners Cup and the FA Cup but typically Everton, it was an era cut short by the effects of the European ban on English team after the Heysel Stadium disaster that led to the premature break-up of the greatest team that ever wore Royal Blue. 

A rough end for Ballianmore but what a magical journey

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It’d be easier supporting one of the bigger clubs but the memory of jumping around like a yahoo back in 1994 when we came from two goals down to beat Wimbledon and ensure survival, through to Gareth Farrelly ensuring survival in 1998 or the more recent great escapes over the past two years are just as vivid as if we won a trophy - not that we'd turn down winning something, anything right now.  

Any Evertonian will reel off the rich history of the club - as the song goes “And if you know your history” is not just a line to be sung on match days but rather a declaration of allegiance. I’m not going to reel off the list of firsts Everton have achieved in English football except to say that when they talk of the great goalscorers like Messi, Ronaldo or Erling Haaland, they’re still all playing second fiddle to Dixie Dean!

Known one time at the Merseyside Millionaires, the Toffees make the news now more because of our financial plight rather than what happens on the field, unless of course it is something like what happened to Dominic Calvert Lewin in last Thursday’s FA Cup tie against Crystal Palace.

If you want to know what it's like to be an Everton fan, that dismissal just about sums it up - if the referee had given a red card for DCL’s tackle, we’d have shrugged our shoulders, maybe griped a bit about it being harsh but you couldn’t really argue. But the fact that it took the intervention of a VAR official to, for all intents and purposes, instruct the referee to send off the Everton number 9 only served to enrage the Toffees fans.

There is a lot to be enraged about right now starting firstly with the Premier League’s decision to dock 10 points for Profit & Sustainability breaches, coming after Everton lost an enormous multi-million pound sponsorship deal due to the war in Ukraine that would have put the blues in the clear financially while Newcastle, Chelsea, Man City, Notts Forest and a host of others are skating on by? 

How about a string of VAR and refereeing decisions going against the Toffees or the mess that is going on about the club’s ownership and when, or if, the new owners will get clearance?

Yeah, when you write it down, it sounds paranoid but that’s part and parcel of being an Everton fan and boy do we embrace it! Nobody does rage like an Everton fan and if anything, the ten point deduction has brought what had been a fractured fanbase together into an unshakable and unwavering army.

There are a few Toffees around Leitrim and I see the same fanaticism that courses through me in fellow Toffees Seamus Gallagher, Charles Beirne and Vincent O'Rourke but, no more than the Villa or Spurs fans, we're an endangered species. 

Willie Donnellan's highs and lows from Leitrim's 2023 sporting year

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Yet nothing beats the excitement that breaks out any time I’ve ever met another Toffee - seemingly  an universal experience for Everton fans!  You’ve never met them before and won’t see them ever again but for a moment, your fellow Toffee will stand happily to discuss all things Everton. 

Right now, we're battling the world it seems but with a magnificent new Stadium at Bramley Moore Dock starting to dominate the skyline along the Mersey and finally what appears to be a coherent development plan behind the scenes, Everton fans are starting to believe that things might settle down. 

If there was any justice in the world, Seamus Coleman would win something with Everton before he retires  - if ever a club and its fans, with all its stubbornness, passion and sheer bloody mindedness is embodied in a player, it is surely  the Donegal legend. If that day comes, and it probably won't, mad Toffees all over the world will celebrate like nothing else but until that day comes, we'll stick by the Toffees no matter what.