Dixie Dean link to new partership
SLIGO Rovers chairman Tommy Higgins said the new partnership between Sligo Rovers and Everton was formed with the help of Dixie Dean’s granddaughter Melanie Prentice.
The legendary Dean – a goalscoring hero with Everton – had a brief but memorable spell at The Showgrounds in the 1930s. Higgins, talking on Ocean FM, said discussions between the Bit O’Red Supporters Trust and Melanie Prentice helped get the ball rolling for this new development.
“It’s a lovely story going back to last summer’s GoFundMe page getting the club back up and running again. There was a lot of donations from Everton supporters and Gerard O’Connor of the Bit O’Red Supporters Trust had a dialogue going with Melanie Prentice, the granddaughter of Dixie Dean. I found out she was married to a fella called David Prentice, who is a reporter with the Liverpool Echo.”
Higgins continued: “David introduced me to Richard Kenyon who is Everton’s marketing director. I made a pitch to him and he responded very quickly, they were delighted with the opportunity and were wonderful in how they conducted their business. We had it done within a month.” Meetings are currently taking place to hammer out all the finer details of the partnership, with Higgins confirming academy and youth development will be central to what both clubs hope to achieve.
“We are sitting down to work out a programme. The future of our club is the academy and we want to invest in that. The spine of our current team features a few of those lads and we have to promote that. We can also tap into the Everton academy and the Everton coaches will come over here for our summer camps so we see an awful lot out of it,” he added.