At the Church of St Luke the Evangelist on Goodison Road, the regular Sunday service starts at 11am. This week the congregation filed in to worship an hour later, but not into here. For the church with its own football ground, things will never be the same. The same goes for everybody crammed in next door.
Ahead of the final Premier League game at Goodison on Sunday, the Heritage Society unsurprisingly expected to be busier than ever before. Plenty of supporters came to make purchases, walking up the twisting wooden steps and queueing patiently if asked. Each seemed desperate to make a downpayment of nostalgia tax, one more memento. Others are just wandering around, taking a look at the old place for one more time. I speak to a couple who don’t have match tickets. For them today, St Luke’s is the Goodison replacement.
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This was a move more than 60 years in the making. In February 1963, a plan was first put forward to build a new 100,000-seater stadium, although it fell dormant. In 1997, 85 per cent of Everton supporters surveyed voted to leave Goodison for a proposed new stadium (a plan abandoned in 2003). In 2006, the unpopular Kirkby option was raised. In 2010, Walton Hall Park was the intended option.
On Goodison Road, the consensus is that, if this is a wake, it should be a celebration of life. It is 9am and the cans and flares are out. Outside the Winslow Hotel, a blue flag is waved on repeat and the songbook exhausted before recommencing from the top. Blue fireworks explode into a bright blue sky and everybody pretends that they can see them in the sun.
The aesthetics are of a street party, but I think that’s wide of the mark. Instead, these people are simply trying to live their longest day to stretch out the farewell. Bacon butties at 8am, beers at 9am, match at 12pm and then back out into the world at 3pm to wish you could do it all over again, one last time.
Everton 2-0 Southampton (Sunday 18th May)
Game no: 91/92 Miles: 219 Cumulative miles: 17,670 Total goals seen: 237 The one thing I’ll remember in May: All of it. I’ve never been part of saying goodbye to a football stadium before and it is one of those football experiences that I’ll never forget.To half of this city – and to many other traditionalists outside it – Goodison is the embodiment of Hopcraft’s description. It’s the minutiae that sticks out and thus gains inordinate importance: the bricks in the wall spelling out the club’s name, the letters atop the Sir Philip Carter Park Stand, the cramped wooden seats, St Luke’s and its wares upstairs.
Goodison’s cramped wooden seats added to its charm (Photo: Getty)Everton’s men said goodbye to Goodison after 133 years (Photo: Getty)The new stadium will struggle to recreate the minutiae that made Goodison special (Photo: Getty)At Goodison, as at so many old grounds, some or none of that may apply. But the brilliance comes from an organic process without calculation. Nobody thought that they would build those letters in the wall to provoke nostalgia 50 years down the line. It’s like one of those old recipes of your grandmother’s, that even though written down still refers to “pinches”, “splashes” and “to taste”. You can never replicate its intangible elements: time, care, experience, love.
square FOOTBALL Doing the 92I'm visiting all 92 football league clubs this season - and I need your help
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History will be lost; pretending otherwise is a distraction tactic. There will be well-meaning attempts to take some of it with them, but a football ground is an amalgam of hundreds of thousands of individual matchday experiences and Bramley Moore Dock starts on nought. The pubs, the corner shops, the burger vans, the walking routes and the people you meet along the way, literally and figuratively; all will change.
Whether this is all good for Everton is a more complicated question that may shift according to which stakeholder you speak to. The principal focus is on expansion in the form of revenue, an argument that has gained greater credence in the age of Profitability and Sustainability Rules. The basic equation is true: more seats=more money=more spending power. Everybody is happy with that.
That is one of the great laments of modern Everton. In 2017, when Bramley Moore was confirmed as the most likely destination, Everton finished seventh in the Premier League under Ronald Koeman and qualified for Europe. That also marked the point at which decline began to set in. The entire stadium project has been played out in front of desperate decay.
The final Premier League game at Goodison was set amid a blur of blue smoke (Photo: Getty)Losing history creates psychological uncertainty that is impossible to escape. Over recent seasons, Goodison has been parodied as the natural home of mutiny and discord towards everything that was breaking: bad football, bad results, bad investments by bad leaders. But the familiarity of home was subconsciously reassuring. Lose in the same way in a new place and there is a danger that nothing feels real.
We should also reflect the potential within this move; if there are regrets then they are accompanied with great excitement. Coming so relatively soon after the Friedkin takeover, this is a unique chance for a new start that Everton desperately needs. Bramley Moore Dock brings with it uncertainty, but so what – there is a clear argument that familiar elements of recent life at Goodison have been objectively negative. An excellent environment can breed excellence.
Everton stared their own oblivion square in the face. That changes you. It also means that when somebody very rich comes along, removes the most unpopular figure within a club and then commits to your move away, you find it more easy to interpret that move as a shot at a better life.
And then, as if to reinforce history meeting future, is David Moyes, that old custodian who welcomed the legendary players and thanked supporters for signing his name on the final day. The permanent must guide them through the months of transience.
Goodison is going for good but also staying open. They woke up early to extend a day they never really wanted to come. They sang in jubilant pride outside and inside their beloved club, but the flag on top of the Bullens Stand hung solemnly at half mast.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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