Enough Is Enough

David Moyes' boast that he was managing 'The People's Club', when he first arrived at Everton, has set me thinking; it takes me a while.

The clear implication is that Everton fans are from the city and Liverpool fans are glory hunting outsiders. There was a banner in the Everton end at the derby recently, welcoming Liverpool fans to the city. It's exactly the same sort of baiting of the bigger team's fans suffered by the legions of Manchester United fans, who travel up from the Home Counties every fortnight, but with less justification.

It is also demeaning to the many Everton fans living in nearby places, like the Wirral or St Helens; Bootle might be stretching it a bit but you get the point. Are they less Evertonian by daring to live outside the boundary?

Judging by their nickname, their core support sounds like it's from the more outlying areas anyway; Everton Mints would surely only be called 'toffees' by woollybacks! This curious use of the word toffee nearly landed Ed in bother years ago at school. He studied in the borderlands of Prescot and, while working his way through a bag of sweets, was invited to 'Give us a toffee' by a tough Lancastrian. Ed replied that he didn't have any and carried on eating! I've had much the same, if less perilous, discussions while at work on Lancastrian names for different types of bread products.

I used to suffer under a similar baseless prejudice that Everton was supported by better off people coming into Liverpool. In the years when their team wasn't doing so well, the gates would be down and they had better things to do on a Saturday, like playing golf! In contrast, Liverpool's poorer years saw no downturn through the turnstiles.

This pointless, historically inaccurate, Wirralian ramble was set off by being offered an Everton Mint at work. People's club? All a load of humbug.