ROYLE BLUE
Big Joe on his undying love for Everton, his fondness for City . . . and being back in the game aged 69
‘My first game as Everton boss, we beat Liverpool 2-0, and I swear the roof lifted’
JOE ROYLE is contemplating his return to the game, four months shy of his 70th birthday.
‘People say you must be mad going back in at 69 — I have wondered that!’
last month, the everton great became a director at Wigan athletic after a Chinese takeover brokered by his son Darren, who is now the Championship club’s chairman. ‘My boss,’ he says with a smile.
The decision was a simple one. ‘I signed my first pro contract as an apprentice at 14,’ Royle explains in the kitchen of his smart Ormskirk home. ‘so that’s 55 years in football at one level or another. It’s a lifestyle and you miss it.’
Royle, who will work on transfers at the DW stadium, left his last role nurturing talent at everton a year ago. at the time there were rumours that it was down to the arrival of sam allardyce.
‘It wasn’t so much that,’ he explains. ‘It was more a personal thing. The analogy I use is that it’s hard being on the backbenches when you’ve been Prime Minister. I’d seen it with (previous managers) Roberto Martinez and Ronald Koeman, and with sam coming I thought it would be a nice time to come away from it.’
While Royle made his name in management with the swashbuckling Oldham athletic side of the early 90s and is fondly remembered at Manchester City, everton remains his true love.
‘I am an evertonian,’ he says. ‘I first started going when I was seven or eight with a tugboat captain from over the road. We used to go in the paddock.
‘If you look at Goodison now from the Main stand, there’s still a wooden panel where the clock used to be and that’s where we stood.
‘There was an Fa Cup tie we lost against aston Villa, when we went behind the goal. It was at the time when a lot of coins were being thrown. This tugboat captain hoisted me over the barrier and said “go and get all that money”.’
There would be more silverware at Goodison as a player and manager, including an Fa Cup and First Division title.
But for Royle, who made his debut at 16 and would go on to play for england, two memories stand out.
‘My first game as manager in 1994 when we beat liverpool 2-0,’ he says. ‘I know science will tell you it can’t happen but when we scored the second I could swear the roof lifted and I’m sticking by it.’
The second was in the yellow of Norwich City. ‘My last game as a player was at Goodison. I scored and Norwich won but I still got a standing ovation. as I came off the Norwich manager at the time, Ken Brown, said he’d never heard anything like it before.’
Will he miss the old place when, as the club hope, they move to a new stadium on the banks of the River Mersey? ‘Yes and no. I can only sit in certain seats because I can’t get my legs out! anyone over 5ft 10in struggles.’
his voice lowers. ‘ That said, there’s still nowhere like it on a cold winter’s night when everton need the 12th man.’
Royle’s time at everton came to a premature end, following a sixthplaced finish the previous season. a sadness over his departure lingers. ‘I fell out with the local paper — I always said I gave them a silver service but unfortunately they used one of the knives to stab me in the back. It came from nowhere.
‘I still see Peter Johnson (then chairman) on holiday and we usually end up with a glass of wine shaking our heads at what happened.’
From everton it was the short trip to another club he had played for. Manchester City in 1998 was far removed from the ultra- slick machine of today where money is no object. When Royle arrived, City were destined for the third tier.
In his first full season, they had to rely on the last-gasp, now famous Paul Dickov goal which forced extra time and ultimate victory over Gillingham in a 1999 play-off final they had trailed 2-0.
‘People have said it may have been a turning point because you don’t know how the public would have reacted had they stayed in the third division for another year.
‘I smile when I hear the fans still singing “We’re not really here”. I think that started when we were at Wycombe, or York or somewhere. It was gallows humour. The older fans tell me that year was one of their best supporting City because they loved going to all those little grounds. Well I bloody didn’t!’
at the time, City used the council-owned Platt lane facility, around the corner from their Moss side home, to train. It is safe to say that it was far removed from the gleaming £200m etihad campus.
‘One day a particularly sheepish groundsman asked me if I wouldn’t mind getting off the pitch because he had to prepare it for an amateur final on the sunday,’ Royle recalls.
I ask if it was true that drunks used to shout abuse during training sessions. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘ and that was just the players!’
That he can smile about how it ended at City, amid unfair criticisms of a booze culture following re relegation from the Premier league in 2001, speaks volumes.
‘Too much was made of it it,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t right. It was nice to see that w when Kevin Keegan took ov over, the spine of the same si side swept them through th the next season.’
Royle, whose father was a Mancunian ( and a tr trained concert pianist), le left another indelible m mark on City.
‘ ‘I allegedly coined the ph phrase City-itis,’ he says. ‘Ju ‘Just when you think thin things can’t get worse, they do. although I think when the club was on its knees with two minutes to go at Wembley, somebody up there (in heaven) decided, “They’ve had enough”, and we came out of it the other end.’ at Wigan, Royle will work with manager Paul Cook, a fellow scouser of whom he cannot speak highly enough. ‘his record is terrific — three promotions in five years. The guy knows what he’s doing — he’s humorous and committed.’
Does he believe english managers get enough opportunities at the top of the game? ‘Yes and no. You’ve got to look at the way the game has changed and the nationalities have changed. Most of the top players now are foreign. If you picked a Premier league XI it would be mostly foreign players.
‘The one thing english coaches and people are lazy about is languages. We don’t have many coaching abroad. Most that come here speak english and I think that’s a big factor. If you’ve got foreign players, you want someone who’s at least bilingual.’
In his new role, Royle will again use the eye for a bargain he picked up buying and selling cars in the latter stages of his playing career and turned into a fine art at Oldham, whom he took to the Premier league and to Wembley twice.
But he recognises that circumstances have changed since he was picking up the likes of Denis Irwin, earl Barrett and Ian Marshall for a pittance from bigger neighbours.
‘It’s very hard to do what we did at Oldham. We were taking players from everton, leeds and City and giving them a rise. You just can’t do that now.’
What happened at Oldham was not far off a miracle. Can it be repeated?
‘It’s more about small steps forward,’ he says. ‘There is money but we have to be cute with our buying because of Financial Fair Play.
The owners are realistic. They want to stabilise. There’s one surprise every year — we’d like to be that surprise.’