Dave Prentice's A Grand Old Team to Report was published last October - and is still rated #1 Best Seller on the Everton FC section on Amazon.
It boasts a 4.7 out of 5 star rating and reviews included: "Fantastic read. Made me laugh along the way and even made me shed a tear when describing the final hours of the legendary Dixie Dean's life.", "A terrific, easy read for any Blue" and "The most interesting book about my favourite subject Everton football club, that l have read, excellent read."
Even the most successful captain in the club's history, Kevin Ratcliffe, tweeted: "Great relaxing read Prenno, good inside stories, I’d say a must read for Evertonians."
This week it is available in paperback.
We published a selection of excerpts when it was published last year - but to mark the paperback release on August 12, here's a few more tasters ....
Everton chairman Peter Johnson could be entertaining company.
On Cup Final day 1996 we enjoyed a long lunch in Dublin together. I say lunch, it consisted entirely of Guinness, and we were thrown together by accident rather than design.
Joe Royle had taken his squad to face Home Farm in a Friday night end of season friendly – then allowed them Saturday to unwind, watch that day’s Cup Final between Liverpool and Manchester United and generally do what a group of footballers would do at the end of a long, hard season.
And in 1996 that meant drink. Drink monumental quantities of beer. And drink some more.
I’d travelled with the squad and had it in my head to join them on a Saturday all-dayer. Peter clearly had the same idea.
Joe had booked the players into a separate hotel to the staff, maybe as a reward for finishing sixth and maybe to allow them to unwind without the authoritative eyes of the coaching staff overseeing them.
So I’d walked the short distance from the staff hotel to the players’ hotel at 10.30am on Saturday morning – to find Peter having done exactly the same thing.
Except every single player had taken the phrase “all-dayer” literally.
They’d gone out on the lash at 10am and were already hard at it. No lie-ins. No late breakfasts. They were nowhere to be seen.
So Peter was reluctantly forced into watching the Cup Final build up with me – in a Dublin pub.
The conversation was pleasant enough. We kept our intake to around four or five pints, then Peter wisely said: “I need to go back to the hotel otherwise I won’t make it out tonight.”
So we returned to our respective rooms. The lack of meaningful incident in the White Suits final was such that I’d actually nodded off on my hotel bed until the sound of Barry Davies shrieking: “Cantona .......” woke me with a start.
Jolted into action I called Joe Royle’s room to see what the plans were for the evening and Big Joe replied: “Come on up! We’re having a party to celebrate United’s victory!”
So I did. That was the beginning of a long and while I’d like to say memorable night, the events are understandably sketchy.
It involved a nightclub called Lillie’s Bordello. It included the sight of Dave Watson in trainers and jeans – only FA Cup winning captains were allowed such casual attire in a capital city nightclub in 1996 – still standing, drinking and conducting coherent conversation after, by rough consensus, having consumed something approaching a barrel load of Guinness.
And it also included a bizarre incident including pop star Lisa Stansfield.
Joe Parkinson was a lively young buck in 1996 and he’d spotted the Rochdale singer in the club. So he repeatedly loitered in her general vicinity, belted out the first few chords of her hit single: “I’ve been around the world and I, I, I .....” in broad Lancastrian, then disappeared.
He repeated the trick over and over again.
When you’ve been drinking Guinness all day such high jinks are hilariously funny.
Lisa whirled around every time, but Joe was in his Premier League prime and his speed off the mark was deceptive.
He wasn’t once caught and I still wonder what poor, puzzled Lisa made of the experience.
Joe, his room-mate Matt Jackson and myself then hired a horse and carriage to take us to our hotel to watch Lennox Lewis outpoint Ray Mercer in a heavyweight boxing contest which proved infinitely less entertaining than the earlier events of the evening.
The journey was barely 100 yards, and cost about 30 euros, but it wasn’t a night for rational behaviour.
Matt has since told me his over-riding memory of that evening was of me leaving their bedroom at around 4am, cramming my pockets full of the Club Sandwiches they had ordered for their room – ‘for the journey back to my hotel.’
Looking back now it all seems so normal, so ordinary.
But it was probably the high point of my time as Everton correspondent.
Everton were the FA Cup holders, I had a close, if strange, relationship with the club chairman, the manager was one of the most engaging and honest individuals it has ever been my good fortune to work with in football and I could describe some of the players in the squad as personal friends.
I was allowed to travel, mix and engage with virtually everyone at the club, the football club I had grown up supporting.
So delivering stories for the paper I worked for, the Liverpool Echo, was like shelling peas.
Looking back, I’d come into journalism just before the football club drawbridge started to raise.
Everton had no formal press officer then. Now they have a media department numbering almost a hundred.
Back then I visited Everton’s training ground every morning for tea and toast with the manager, and returned at lunchtime to try and persuade a player to be interviewed. Now a barrier and a security hut bars access to Finch Farm, access to which is by invitation only.
And before the turn of the millennium I ghost-wrote the manager’s notes, an assistant-manager’s page, the captain’s column and penned the Youth Academy reports for the match programme. The programme for the first match of the 1997-98 season contained 40 pages. I wrote 18 of them.
Nowadays a team a dozen-strong produce the matchday magazine.
I was an Everton reporter, programme writer, players’ pal and old schoolmate of the chairman’s girlfriend.
That was all going to change. And not always for the better.
