Carra: My Autobiography (6 page)

The worst experience that season was tuning into the vital away match at Spurs in April 1985. They were our rivals for the title so I'd developed a pathological hatred for them, checking their fixtures and willing them to concede goals as much as I urged Everton to score. Everton had an old-fashioned system of arranging the final scores on boards around the perimeter of the pitch to keep supporters informed of others' results. You had to match the game with the corresponding letter or number in the programme notes. I never had the patience to hang around and work it out. I'd run out of Goodison after a game, straight into the shop across the road and shout, 'How did Spurs get on?' More often than not that season I was told they had won. I'd go home disappointed, which was ridiculous after having watched my own team deliver another superb performance.

By the time we played Spurs at White Hart Lane we knew if we won, the title race was over.

'Now we're off to Tottenham where we hear there's been a goal,' the radio host said just ten minutes into the game.

For a second, my stomach ached with anxiety.

'It's Andy Gray for Everton!' yelled the commentator, his voice hoarse with excitement.

I felt I was on the pitch, scoring the goal myself. At the very least I wanted to be there joining the celebrations, especially when the game ended 2–1 to the Blues.

I never fully appreciated how good that team was at the time. Watching players of the calibre of Peter Reid gave me a perfect education in how to play football. My dad loved Reid more than any player. I've met him many times, and it's even better when someone you admire is such a great man off the pitch too. Whatever he's doing in football, wherever he's a manager, I always want him to be successful. 'Watch and learn from him,' my dad would tell me. 'Look at the way he never gives the ball away. Look how much the game means to him. Even if he's having a nightmare, he'll never hide.'

We didn't hide in Munich for the first leg of that Cup Winners' Cup semifinal. I was out there with my dad, my Uncle Peter and their mates Tommy Valo and Davey Mull, sampling the delights of the European away-days that would become part of my life.

'Have you come here for a fight?' we were asked by the Germans when we arrived.

'No, we've come to show you how to play football,' we'd say back.

Everton fought as hard as usual for a 0–0 draw, and me and my dad went back to our hotel. Before long we received a call in the room from Tommy and Davey.

'We're at the players' hotel,' they said. 'Get down here.'

I saw all the Everton players, and when the team coach left I chased it down the road. Our left-back John Bailey saw me, made the driver stop the coach, and then gave me a can of Coke. It was a small gesture, but when you've travelled all that way to see your team, that kind of thing stays with you for ever. I suppose it's one of the reasons I've always got time for those who make the effort to follow Liverpool in Europe.

In the second leg, I was given my first taste of true Scouse passion on a European night. I've enjoyed plenty of similar occasions as a Liverpool player, but as an Everton fan, nothing beat that semi with Bayern Munich. The Germans didn't know what hit them, other than a lot of Everton boots and plenty more heart and soul. Only English fans, maybe only Scousers, create an atmosphere like that. And only in the 1980s could players like Andy Gray get away with volleying German defenders up the arse for ninety minutes like he did that night.

Sharpy was my hero, but I loved Kevin Sheedy too. Had Sheedy played in my era, David Beckham would be considered the second greatest deadball expert in Premier League history. At home to Ipswich in that 1984–85 season, Sheedy put one freekick to the keeper's right only for the referee to disallow it. Not a problem. He placed the retake to the left to put Everton ahead. It finished 2–2. I was awestruck.

I've also Sheedy to thank – or should that be blame? – for providing me with my first lesson in the fickleness of supporters, something I've also become used to as a player. It came during the FA Cup semifinal against Luton in 1985. I was the unofficial chairman of the Sheedy fan club, and he played in that game after being out injured for a few weeks. Kevin Richardson had been deputizing and playing well, but Kendall brought Sheedy straight back.

It was obvious he wasn't 100 per cent fit, and he wasn't having a good afternoon. The fans standing near me were crucifying his performance, no matter what he did. If he lost the ball, they'd shout; if he passed to a teammate, they'd still criticize him. As his biggest fan, I took all the stick he was taking personally. I prayed for just one chance with a freekick. When it came, I knew what would happen next. I rehearsed my celebration in my head like a military operation. Sheedy stepped up and kept his part of the bargain with another sweet left-footer, and I put my plan into action. The fans were ecstatic. I turned towards those who'd been slaughtering him as if they were all Luton fans and screamed my approval directly into their eyes. Of course, they were oblivious, celebrating as much as the rest of us, but to me Sheedy's freekick had delivered a message loud and clear to his critics: keep your thoughts to yourself next time.

Sheedy's equalizer kept Everton in the competition, and Derek Mountfield's winner allowed me to fulfil my first important football mission. As the jubilant supporters celebrated, seven-year-old James Carragher found himself on the pitch, jumping on the backs of the Everton players. 'I'll be on the television tonight!' I sensed triumphantly as I returned to my standing position.

Eddie Cavanagh had a youthful new member of his exclusive club.

As I got older, it didn't matter where or when Everton played, I'd be there. Usually in body, always in mind, and mostly in both. Never mind the secondhalf radio commentaries, we'd always make sure we got in somehow, even if we didn't have a ticket.

Wembley trips seemed a normal annual event then. We could plan our year around May for a cup final, or August for the Charity Shield, or March for the, er, Zenith Data Systems Cup. Remember that one? I suspect many have tried to forget it.

The 4–1 defeat to Crystal Palace in 1991 was memorable for at least thirty Bootle kids who headed for Wembley with my dad. He led them all to the stadium and told the stewards it was all arranged for the youngsters to go in for nothing. 'They're all from care homes in Liverpool,' he explained. 'I've heard they're all allowed in for nothing on a Sunday. It's a free gate on Sunday, isn't it?' The stewards looked bemused and found a room for the youngsters to stay while they found some officials. My dad then explained he had his own ticket and would be going to his seat in five minutes, so if the thirty lads weren't allowed in the stewards would need to stay and look after them. Unsurprisingly, thirty seats were found, taking the attendance that day to a whopping 41,030.

Some London performances were more remarkable than others, and not solely because of the result. I was hysterical in 1985, but that had nothing to do with Norman Whiteside's winning goal.

An hour before kickoff I was with my dad and Paul when we saw a cockney tout, a spiv straight out of a classic
Only Fools
and Horses
script, offering tickets down Wembley Way. He took out a bundle of about twenty to sell, so my dad grabbed them to dish out to the genuine fans who didn't fancy paying a fortune. Unfortunately, he turned straight into a policeman who arrested him and the tout on the spot. I was seven and Paul was even younger, but we had to watch as my dad was pounced on and pushed into the back of a police van.

We were taken on board the vacated Everton team coach to calm our tears, then my dad's mates took us in to the match, but all we were thinking about was what had happened to our dad. Would he be stuck in London overnight? Then, twenty minutes before the end of the game, I felt a pat on the shoulder. God knows how my dad found us, because it was still terracing then. I was so relieved to see him, and finally I could enjoy the match. Then Whiteside scored and made the day even worse.

'What's just happened?' I distinctly recall a fan standing next to me asking as the United players and fans celebrated.

Everyone looked at him, and someone said, 'What do you think just happened? They've scored, you stupid bastard.'

I felt like punching him, but my seven-year-old right hook still needed work.

Strange as it sounds, I don't remember being too upset about losing the cup final that season. We had the League and the European Cup Winners' Cup under our belt; the FA Cup, which we'd already won a year earlier, would have been a bonus. The end-of-season party in The Chaucer went on until three a.m. as we'd fulfilled the ultimate ambition of beating Liverpool to the League title for the first time in fifteen years.

As we danced on the pool table in the early hours, I could never have imagined Everton would win only one more title in the next three decades. At that time the competition between the Merseyside rivals was enjoying a golden period. Annually we engaged in a struggle for local and national supremacy. The Everton team in 1986 wasn't as good as in 1985, but in my opinion it was still superior to the Liverpool side that won the double. Oddly, I believe the Liverpool team that threw away a nine-point lead in 1987 was a better side than the Everton team that took the championship. Liverpool collapsed at the end of that season when it looked all over.

If Evertonians want to talk about crucial events in the mid-eighties that changed the course of football history, there's one that stands out for me: Neville Southall getting injured while playing for Wales, just before the title and cup run-in in 1986. I'm still convinced that if Southall had stayed fit until the end of the season, Everton would have won the double.

Southall's the greatest keeper Britain has ever had. One performance I saw him give, away to Coventry in 1988, remains the finest I've seen by any keeper; and the saves he made in the 1–0 cup replay win against Liverpool in February 1991 – the game that followed the famous 4–4 draw immediately before Kenny Dalglish resigned – are still talked about today. He was a goalkeeper who regularly won games, and I'm certain he'd have made the difference in 1986.

I've watched the 1986 FA Cup Final on DVD plenty of times over the last few years, and I still can't believe how much in control Everton were. Liverpool weren't only on the ropes midway through the second half, they were getting a standing count. One mistake by Gary Stevens, giving away the ball outside his own box, changed everything. After being a punchbag for over an hour, Ian Rush came back with the knockout blows. I was devastated when I left Wembley that day, feeling as low as I can ever recall as an Evertonian.

I looked at my dad, expecting to see the same expression I carried, but he never got as down as I did. 'I'm sure I care more about Everton than he does,' I'd say to myself. That wasn't the case. He was just more experienced and wiser about such matters. He was certainly more used to seeing Everton lose than I was. He'd suffered the Gordon Lee era.

Everton's sole goalscorer that day, Gary Lineker, left that summer for Barcelona. He was a great striker, and no one can argue with his goals record when he was at Goodison, but the team did better without him in 1985 and 1987. I didn't take to Lineker when he was an Everton player, and he seemed perfectly happy to get out of the club when the Spaniards made a bid. In my mind, and in that of many Evertonians, Lineker came first in his world and Everton second. I've spoken to some of his ex-team-mates since, and their views confirmed my suspicions.

When, the following summer, Howard Kendall left the club (to be replaced by his assistant Colin Harvey), with Everton sitting proudly as champions, things started to go wrong. Only the appointment of David Moyes fifteen years later threatened a revival. The players who arrived in subsequent seasons, such as Tony Cottee, Pat Nevin and Peter Beagrie, weren't in the same class as we'd seen before. Worldclass players were replaced by average ones, and in some cases that's being generous. Sharp, Reid, Bracewell, Sheedy, Steven and the rest would grace any all-time greatest team list. How I'd love the two wide men I watched in 1985 in my Liverpool team. And what did we have now? As Alan Ball told my dad after he sold Beagrie (a player famous at the time for celebrating goals with a somersault) from Stoke to Everton, 'I've just sold Everton a fucking circus act.' Goodison legend Alan didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he negotiated that deal.

The 1989 FA Cup Final against Liverpool was the last major occasion for most of that great Howard Kendall side, and the best chance for Harvey to win a trophy, but for obvious reasons that was a fixture unlike any before.

As in 1986, I travelled to the semifinal and to Wembley as a Blue, although my feelings after both matches were vastly different. We'd been at Villa Park on the afternoon of 15 April, aware of events unfolding in Sheffield during Liverpool's semifinal with Nottingham Forest, but only hearing the full horrific details when we arrived home. We knew the match at Hillsborough had been abandoned, and as we travelled back to Bootle there was none of the celebrations you might expect having reached the FA Cup Final. We sensed all wasn't well.