Some 60 years ago today, Everton’s first-ever game in European competition produced what the ECHO’s Horace Yates described as “the most nakedly ill-tempered match I have ever seen” as instead of testing themselves against exotic opponents, the Blues scrapped it out in their own ‘Battle of Britain’ while the world stood on the precipice of the threat of a nuclear war. Organised continental club competition started in 1955, but following on from their reluctant stance during early editions of the World Cup (England did not enter the first three tournaments in 1930, 1934 and 1938), the Football Association was initially hesitant to let teams from these shores take part.
Despite securing their first League Championship in 1955, Chelsea were blocked by the FA from taking part in the first European Cup in 1955/56 with Matt Busby’s Manchester United becoming the first English entrants in the competition the following season. The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup – a forerunner of the UEFA Cup and now UEFA Europa League – which was to provide the platform for Everton’s European debut some seven years later, did have two English-based teams in it from the start but bizarrely they were Second Division champions Birmingham City and a combined London XI, who reached the inaugural final which wasn’t played until three years later!
By the time of the Blues first entry in 1962, the formats had become more standardised. The Cup-Winners’ Cup – which in 1985 became Everton’s only European trophy to date – was added in 1960 but an arbitrary ‘one club per city’ rule that would deny the Blues qualification in 1967, 1968 and 1969 usually remained in place for the Fairs Cup.
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Gavin Buckland’s highly-acclaimed Money Can’t Buy Us Love: Everton in the 1960s states that the Blues were originally drawn against Greek side Salonica but following their withdrawal, Dunfermline Athletic stepped in as their replacements. Harry Catterick’s side were the only English participants in that season’s competition but their new opponents – managed by Jock Stein, the legendary Celtic boss who would later steer the Glasgow giants to a record nine domestic titles in a row and a first European Cup triumph for a British club – became a third Scottish entrant along with his future employers, Hibernian and Celtic.
The switch ensured that rather than a near 2,000-mile trip across the continent to Macedonia, Everton were now facing a club comparable in distance from Liverpool to reigning League Champions Ipswich Town, their longest journey on the First Division fixture list. The Blues may well have fared better against relative unknowns from the Balkans though as Buckland explains how pre-match confidence on Merseyside ended up being futile against the backdrop of potentially catastrophic international geopolitics as the Cold War threatened to heat up considerably.
Writing in Money Can’t Buy Us Love , Everton’s official statistician, states: “‘I have a feeling that they (Dunfermline) may be somewhat overawed by the Goodison crowd and are likely to go home with a five or six goal deficit,’ said a local press columnist. The optimism proved misplaced.
“With the Cuban missile crisis escalating the threat of nuclear war, the outcome of an early round European fixture at Goodison seemed insignificant in comparison.”
Watched by 40,224 – a gate almost 13,000 lower than Everton’s previous home game against Aston Villa in the only season to date in which the Blues’ average attendances have topped the 50,000 mark – the only goal of the first leg came from Dennis Stevens some 25 minutes in when he connected cleanly with Billy Bingham’s corner and saw his header go in off the crossbar. However, with five players booked it was described as “a game marred by cynical play from both teams”
The ECHO’s Leslie Edwards was particularly unimpressed when describing what had unfolded in the first leg in his Looking at Sport column, headlined “Reckless, Scrappy, Scruffy.” He wrote: “If last night’s miserable exhibition is any indication of the shape of things to come in the Inter-City Fairs Cup, they can keep the cup – and the competition. A more dissatisfying 90 minutes of ‘football’ would have been hard to devise.
“Football needs all the good publicity it can get. This performance, if it could be so described, did the game nothing but harm. To be candid, it was disgraceful.
“If Dunfermline by their negative, defensive chivvying of Everton players in possession got the game off on the wrong foot, Everton for their part did little to bring sense and sound football to it.”
Edwards then signed off with some gallows humour referring to the United States’ escalating diplomatic stand-off with the Soviet Union by claiming a friend of his overheard the following conversation…
Evertonian: “Who do you fight next week mate?”
Fifer: “We’ll nominate you for Cuba!”
Buckland explains that: “The return in the Scottish town seven days later was more entertaining than the pitched battle at Goodison but equally controversial. The home team were more enterprising and took an early lead through a 20-yard strike from George Miller.
“With a third game looming, four minutes from time came the defining moment of the tie. The home side’s Harry Melrose looked clearly offside when running onto a long pass from the back and to the delight of the 21,000 crowd slipped the ball past Gordon West.
“Despite the protests of the Everton players, the referee allowed the goal to stand and Catterick’s men were out. Although Everton could count themselves unfortunate, Stein’s side had outplayed the English champions-elect on a night when their attacking vanguard failed to create a single opportunity.”
While it was the end of the Blues’ hopes on their maiden European campaign, in the next round in December, Dunfermline recovered from a 4-0 first leg deficit in Valencia to defeat the Spaniards 6-2 back in Fife before being edged out 1-0 in a neutral play-off in Lisbon the following February by the eventual tournament winners. With the missile scare resolved between the rival global superpowers by the end of the naval quarantine on November 20, catastrophe was averted and the following May, Everton would secure their sixth League Championship.
Buckland observes that their manager Catterick, always something of a footballing Eurosceptic, claiming “some of the supposedly brilliant continental sides would not last five minutes in this league”, would come to view the early exit to Dunfermline as blessing in disguise for his Everton team. The Blues boss would later state: “One can feel relieved that Dunfermline did us a good turn when they defeated us in the Fairs Cup. At least we were relieved of those extra games.”
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