Our aim is to interview 60 Evertonians from all walks of life and all corners of the globe.

3.Ped McPartland

Ped with Tim Cahill

Bio:Ped lives in Old Swan, Liverpool. He is a Everton season ticket holder and has been going to watch games at Goodison Park for 25 years, Ped is a co host of the Followtonians Podcast and also runs the Everton supporters football team Bluekipper F.C. You can follow Ped on Twitter at @PED7.

 Q1.Why Everton?

When they say Evertonians are born they are not kidding, my dad was the only one of 9 kids who supported Everton the rest supporting Liverpool and it was he who first took me the games when I was around 5 or 6, luckily enough it was in 1985.

Q2.Which player from the past would you have loved to have seen?

I think I’d have loved to have seen Dean really, I’d loved to have seen that 60th goal go in and basically to have watched an achievement that will never be bettered, lets face it if he had done that in an American sport there would have been numerous movies made about his life.

Q3.Favourite all-time player?

Duncan Ferguson without a shadow of a doubt, being a blue in the 90s was tough but being in secondary school and known as the biggest blue was harder and just to have a player like him come in with his attitude and swagger just lifted us and to have been in the Gwladys Street when he scored his 1st goal against Liverpool is something I’ll never forget, he gave us pride when we needed it and it fought for us when it seemed no one else did, he was also a excellent footballer and the last of the hard men which we loved him for.

Q4.Dixie Dean OR Alan Ball – who’s better in your book?

Technically I’d say Ball was better he bossed midfields but had the flair that set him apart from most players of his or another generation and as people forget he was also the best player in the 1966 World Cup so he must have had something but unfortunately he was sold at his best and who knows where he could have taken Everton in the 70s.

Q5.You run the Followtonians podcast and your co-host is from the US. How big is Everton’s profile in the US, compared to say Man Utd or Chelsea?

It looks like its getting there, I can only go from what I see but we do look like we have a really good hardcore, our podcast is doing really well in America too which is good. We’ve had really good bonds over the years with Joe Max Moore, Brian McBride, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan and also Preki, Paul Rideout, Robert Warzycha and Mo Johnston. I really think Everton must buy Donovan as I think he would pay for himself.

Q6. Both teams in Merseyside seem to be making positive noises about sharing a stadium, What are your thoughts on a ground share with Liverpool?

I honestly think a shared stadium is the only way forward for both teams whether we like it or not, people have to wake up and realise if they want real success not 5th place finishes and losing cup finals it takes real money to do it, you only have to look at this season, we thought we had everything in place but because we cant put the ball in the net we are bottom and without selling your soul to buyers a shared stadium seems thee only route to me.

Q7.Our form this season has been dire. Where do you think the majority of Evertonians lie, with “Moyes Out”, “In Moyes We Trust” or somewhere in the middle?

I think a lot of fans still back Moyes its just the one’s who don’t just being louder. I think the one’s who do are starting to say right we’ve backed but we want to see something different when its needed like from going from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 when we need goals and if he doesn’t take that on board then i think people will turn against him.

Q8. Following a defeat (a common thing this season) do you?: (a) get drunk, (b) turn off – no match of the day – no papers, no Internet (c) rant, (d) all three? 

I usually go back the pub and try and get it out my system by talking about it but I don’t get drunk, I’ll also read what other Blues have to say but i don’t buy newspapers full stop as they are full of tabloid garbage and i usually wont watch highlights for a few days!

Q9.Is money necessary to compete at the highest level, and if so – should Kenwright step aside?

Money is the only way to compete unless you bring through 4 or 5 outstanding youngsters at once. The only way I’d want to do it is like Arsenal with the stadium but that takes money to do in the first place so we are stuck. Bill Kenwright gets a lot of stick and yes sometimes its warranted when he says stupid things but he’s not a complete idiot, he brought the best young manager in the country into the club on his terms making it transparent he had little or no money but he sold him it by telling him it was his to do what he wished and that is what David Moyes has done.
I think the only way he will step down is if another Blue or Blues steps in with the finances that are needed to push for Champions league football.

Q10. The Followtonians Podcast is a perfect example of just how far and wide the Everton support is, what do you think makes fans from other countries choose Everton?

I think the main thing is the tradition of the club and history that goes with it, the sad thing is the other reason is because people like our fighting spirit and we are the club that keeps going and always bounces back but it simply shouldn’t be seen like that, Everton are one of the greatest clubs in Europe if not the world and the Premier League has distorted this fact, people around the world don’t look back past 1992 and they really should.

Q11.Where do you see Everton in 10 years time?

Hopefully I’d like to see Everton have some kind of financial support in place that allows them to challenge at the top table whether that be a stadium that generates enough money or investment but I fear if steps are not put in place soon to do that we will miss the boat and become another struggling mid to bottom team.

Q12. You were at our final day escape against Wimbledon in 1994, can you describe that game for us?

 

Ped at the legendary 3-2 win over Wimbledon

The day was like one I’ve never encountered before, I had been at the Leeds game away the week before and for 70 minutes we did everything but score only see them bring on David White who inspired them to a 3-0 win and it was this that had dropped us into the shit we would face on the last day of season but regardless of that the fans sung the roof off Elland Road that day so I was expecting something special.

We got to the ground about 12 and as expected the queues were mad and the gates didn’t open till 1.30 so it was wait and pray to get in for most of the kids about to see the biggest game in their lives while mates and mates of mates and mates of someone you once met once who got there late would come over and try and bunk with you.

After waiting for what seemed an age we managed to get in as news filtered to us that the Wimbledon team bus had been burnt out which as you can imagine warmed our hearts. The Street End was packed to the rafters and I like so many more never actually got a seat and watched from above the exits that lead under the stand. Seats where at a premium due to the demolition of the Park End with fans watching from such vantage points as trees in Stanley Park and on the old players houses behind the flatten end.

The atmosphere was like nothing I’d heard before when the players came out, it was like every generation of Evertonians had come together to stop this great club from falling out of its rightful place in the top flight of English football and although it was not the greatest team to grace the old lady it certainly wasn’t the worst.

The game went by like a dream it was just that surreal, first of all an ill stretched arm from Anders Limpar connected with the ball to give Wimbledon a penalty which Dean Holdsworth just converted off Southall’s hand and not long after things turned into a nightmare, Wimbledon on the promise of a all paid holiday to the Bahamas snatched a second when Dave Watson and David Unsworth collided leaving Andy Clarke with a chance to score only to see his shot heading for the corner flag to be somehow sliced into his own net by Gary Ablett, this was a new and daunting kind of hell Everton were now facing.

Everton needed a lifeline and they needed it quick and it was to be Villain turned hero Anders Limpar who managed to fall over thin air to win a penalty of his own and Graham Stuart bravely took to give us hope.

And that was the spark, that was the little speck of something we needed to bring us back from the dead especially as we were shooting into the Gwladys Street, a stand which Howard Kendall once famously told his players would suck the ball into the goal and midway through the half that’s exactly what it did when a player we’d only ever seen score once smashed a volley in from 35 yards and yes 5 yards gets added every 10 years, the ball just bounced up so perfectly for Barry Horne he had no other choice but to hit it and a ball that looked like it was flying into row Z curled and dipped beautifully into the top corner to send us wild and this is not a normal wild, ask any Evertonian who has been in the Street End on such occasion and its bedlam, it is a sea of arms and legs and you end up no where near where you started, men hugging men they’ve never met, poring out emotion they wouldn’t show to their own children.

The ironic thing about it is we thought that was it, we thought we were safe as mixed and ultimately incorrect scores flooded through to us, dont forget this was before the masses had mobile phones and the internet in their pocket, we were relying a on guy who had a pocket radio trying to watch one of most epic games in the clubs history which remaining calm enough to catch the scores of Ipswich and Sheffield United and like any large body of people Chinese whispers developed and we unknowingly were still heading down.

And so it was this tale was heading for one more twist and something that rightly or wrongly will be talked about in Everton folklaw forever. With only 9 minutes left the ball rebounded off Tony Cottee’s shin and fell to Graham Stuart who half block tackled/half shot with the end result being the ball somehow squirming through the fingers of Hans Segers’ hands (With Segers later being accused of match fixing but not on this game) and once again the place erupted but this time it was more in confirmation that we were safe and clear of relegation, thinking well at least if they score again we’ll be ok, luckily enough that did not happen and in the last minute Chelsea scored against Sheffield United and it was them who would be filling the final relegation place.

The final minutes felt like an eternity and I remember referee Keith Cooper kept looking at us and pretending to blow his whistle with a massive grin on face and then finally end our suffering sending us in to mayhem and the famous Everton pitch invasion ensued, I was reluctant to go on as some people were being caught and the picture of me (see pic) was when the camera stayed on me for a while and is on the DVD but at the time it was on BBC Grandstand showing the scenes, to this day I don’t remember what was going through my head but I think I was in a daze, all my family saw it though and my dad even had phone calls from abroad telling him they’d seen me live so it was a special moment. I did get onto the pitch once the club decided it was easier to let us all on.

That day was a massive turning point for the fans, it was a day when old and young took the club back and the gates never slipped back to the dark days of the early 90′s again even if the performances did. We came so close to losing one of the most important things in our lives and it was as if we all decided that to many had taken it for granted and we were never going to allow it to happen again.
The nervous excitement built all week as mates and myself pondered in school just what what faced us come Saturday while having to deal with the usual garbage spewing out of the mouths of our replica wearing but non visitoring Anfield friends which was even worse for me as I was seen as one of the loudest and proudest Blues in the school when we didn’t have much to be proud about.
Come match day and we set off earlier than usual knowing the queues to get in the Gwladys Street would be barmy as not only did the ground have just 3 sides but it was pay on the gate too. We were getting some building work done on our house and I can remember the buildings having a good laugh at us, how only I could have caught up to them that night!