‘Dixie’ Dean’s Bit O’Red story told in new book
In 1939, Sligo Rovers shocked the footballing world when they announced the signing of William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean. A new book by Paul Little tells the story of Dixie’s time here.
IN JANUARY 1939, just months after hanging up his boots and a few weeks into his new career as a talent scout, William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean, the former Everton and England soccer legend, received a surprise request for assistance from the far west of Ireland.
Could he find a goalscorer for Sligo Rovers – the beating heart of a small, provincial town – to drive their dreams of a lucrative cup run and help protect the club’s very existence?
Dean set about finding the right man, but unable to locate candidates willing to make the move across the Irish sea, he had an idea. What if he were to answer Sligo’s call?
And so began the unlikely story of how one of the greatest centre-forwards ever to grace the game added an unexpected and ultimately uplifting chapter to his storied career.
‘In the Shadow of Benbulben: Dixie Dean at Sligo Rovers’, a book by Paul Little, is a romantic tale of divine intervention, uncanny timing and drama on and off the pitch.
It is the tale of ‘Dixie’ Dean’s four months with the Bit O’Red that was to leave an indelible mark on the player, the club and the town.
This book chronicles the fairytale half-season the legendary centre-forward spent in the League of Ireland on the eve of World War 2.
Read and discover how Dean honed his prodigious goalscoring abilities in his Birkenhead youth, how a motorcycle accident in his early days with Everton almost put paid to his career before it had properly started and how he re-wrote the goalscoring record books and became one of soccer’s first international superstars.
This is all before we even get to his fabled spell in Sligo as divine intervention helped lure the great centre-forward out of retirement and to the west coast of Ireland. Rovers’ extraordinary transfer coup shocked the soccer world. The newspapers of the time reported firsthand on Dixie’s extraordinary Irish sojourn as he drove Sligo Rovers to their first ever FAI Cup final.
The people of Sligo took Dean into their hearts and the book explains how Dixie came to see his time there as one of the most rewarding periods of his life.
Putting ‘Dixie’ Dean’s move into perspective is a hard thing to do. You could say it would be the equivelant of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo joining Sligo Rovers today, but even then, they are very visible superstars of the game – everyone knows who they are and what they looked like.
In the late 1930s, ‘Dixie’ Dean was a well-known name in Ireland, but very few are likely to have witnessed him in action before arriving at The Showgrounds. Dean culminated a legendary and almost superhero-like status that would not be possible today. There are few people around these days who can say they were there when the Everton legend was greeted at the train station by an adoring crowd. Joe Martyn, a Sligo town native and still a passionate Rovers fan to this day, was 13-years-old when he saw the man himself arrive in town. Speaking to the Sligo Weekender in 2018, aged 92, he recalled: “I remember when Dixie Dean came here. “I remember going up to the station and seeing him arrive, there was a big crowd to see him that day.
“It was extraordinary for a man like that to come here, he had been scoring great goals for Everton all his career.
“I think it was District Justice Charles Flattery, who was chairman at the time, who was instrumental in making the move happen. “Tommy Curran, who had a pub up on Harmony Hill, is another name I remember being mentioned for bringing Dixie Dean here and I believe when he came here John Harte put him up in a flat above the old Café Cairo on Wine Street, he owned it that time.
“He was a centreforward as we know and he scored some great goals out at The Showgrounds.
“He used to tell the winger,‘hit the balls across, and I’ll put them in,’ and that’s exactly what he did, as soon as a ball came across,the ball was in the back of the net.”
As an Everton player, Dean enjoyed a decorated career, winning the First Division twice, the Second Division once, two FA Charity Shields and one FA Cup, all the while scoring an incredible 350 goals in 400 appearances for the Toffees.
The author of this book, Paul Little, is a freelance soccer writer making his debut as a solo artist in the world of books. Paul has worked in sports broadcasting and has written for numerous publications, including Football 365 and more recently, the Irish Daily Star. In The Shadow of Benbulben is available locally from Liber and Easons and also via pitchpublishing.co.uk.