‘All I wanted was to play for Everton and play at Goodison’

At the end of the season, Everton will relocate to a new location at Bramley-Moore Dock, where they have lived since 1892, before saying goodbye to Goodison Park.

The final men’s senior game at Southampton’s historic home will be played on Sunday in the Premier League match.

Goodison will become the new home for Everton’s women’s team, who will be looking to create memories of their own at the famous old stadium.

However, Sunday’s game will mark the end of a era for the men’s side.

Everton has close ties to Wales, starting with the fans who visit Goodison Park on matchdays and the players who have worn the famous royal blue shirt.

Two former Wales and Everton captains, Kevin Ratcliffe and Barry Horne, were boyhood Evertonians who grew up in north Wales.

Ratcliffe is Everton’s most prosperous captain ever.

Under manager Howard Kendall, he led the Toffees to victories in the First Division, First Division, and FA Cup in 1985 and 1985, respectively.

Former defender Ratcliffe made his senior Everton debut in 1980, the first of 493 appearances for the club.

“I had one goal in mind: play football for Everton Football Club and play for Goodison,” he said.

” My family were all Evertonians. You’re going to sign for Everton, aren’t you? I was considering signing for Chester when Everton arrived.

“I just felt like I had a better opportunity at Everton and wanted to leave the Boys’ Pen and play on the pitch, despite the promise that I made at Chester that I would join the team before I was 17.”

” That was my dream – but not in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to be captain of them and winning things. That was an additional feature only.

Gordon Lee gave me my chance, and Billy Bingham was the manager who signed me as a schoolboy.

” But I didn’t start playing regular until Howard Kendall came to the club.

Coventry City and Coventry City were in a third-round League Cup tie. Howard was under pressure and he wasn’t going to last until the morning had we lost that night.

We won a terrible game with a score of 2-1, and it seems like a rollercoaster ride from that point forward for the next four or five years.

“I can recall playing Manchester United here in October 1984. Manchester United had got off to a flyer that season and they were on about winning the league.

“The league doesn’t get won after ten games played,” Howard said, like many other managers in the past.

“We won them by 5-0, and we were fortunate to have won them by eight or nine.”

” It was one of those days that every single player was on top of his game and they (United) had a decent side.

” The Bayern Munich game]in the 1985 Cup Winners Cup semi-final second leg] will take a lot of beating. The atmosphere was completely and unrealistic.

“The bus was rocking, and we couldn’t get down there because we had to get to the ground and turn around Bullens Road.”

” We literally got into the ground 45 minutes before the game because the streets were lined with fans – it was pay on the gate in those days.

“It was a legitimate game of football, with football being played as well as tackles going in everywhere.

“Lostahar Matthaus said Everton was the fittest team he’d ever played when they spoke with him about the game a few years ago.”

“I think that was a big compliment even though we thought we didn’t train that hard – that must have been how much we were loving it.

When Duncan Ferguson scored against Manchester United, I watched a game here, and that was the closest I could get to the atmosphere.

“When Wayne Rooney scored that goal against Arsenal, I would say the other one.”

” The atmosphere after the game, where people just stood in this ground looking and knowing they’d seen something special – and not just in a goal but as in a player as well.

You see this location as an arena, and you’re going to battle, you say.

The atmosphere here is “unbelievable,” and the fans make it happen.

“I always thought when I played here at night that I never got tired – that’s the difference between a daytime game and a night game with the atmosphere.

It occasionally zaps people’s energy, but for me, it kept me going.

Going to the new stadium will be fantastic because it’s a typical old ground and needs improvement.

Midfielder Barry Horne joined Everton from Southampton in the summer of 1992 for £700, 000.

Everton signed St Asaph-born Horne in 123 league games, with the most notable of those victories coming against Wimbledon in 1994.

Horne, who was a key player in the last Everton team to win a significant trophy, left the organization a year later and eventually served as the Professional Footballers’ Association’s chairman.

Rhyl, Wrexham, Portsmouth, Southampton, “It did take a while for me to get here,” I said in the end.

“Throughout my career, all I wanted to do was improve and play at the highest level I could, wherever that might be.

” It just so happened that I got the chance to come here and that was the pinnacle of my career – that move and my time spent here.

“I spent two and a half wonderful years at Southampton under the direction of Chris Nicholl before changing managers and finding myself at the end of my contract.”

Spurs and Everton were my choices, but that was not the case.

Everton’s first goal in the Premier League is “my first goal,” and that statement will always be true.

The interesting thing about that day is that of the starting 22 players, 18 were English, and it was against a very strong Sheffield Wednesday team.

” Me and Nev were two of the non-English people. That demonstrates how times have changed.

Anyone can’t be proud of the outcome of the Wimbledon game and the struggle that followed.

” Ultimately we were part of the problem as the players that had put ourselves in that position.

“I can’t even imagine how different things would have been if we had gone down,” he said.

“We had a great team under Joe Royle,” said.

“We won the FA Cup by defeating all of the top teams at home and away.”

“We beat Newcastle here – Dave Watson scored in the Gwladys Street end and they were flying at the time.

“We won the FA Cup, and as great as the club is, they’ve only won it a few times, and I was one of the teams that did it.”

” I’m very proud to have to have played and been a part of the club’s history – a magnificent history.

You become aware of the history and some of the nights in particular as a result of constant video compilations and goal compilations about this place.

I was “desperate for many, many years” to leave Goodison, but you realize it’s getting old as you get older.

“It’s been a magnificent stadium – it’s had the World Cup here – but it’s had it’s time. Although we’ll all feel depressed, it’s appropriate.