Legacy by Tim Cahill

Author:Tim Cahill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Our battle against Liverpool continued hot and heavy into that spring. Every week was a battle to see who’d finish higher in the Premiership table. By the time we hosted Newcastle at Goodison Park on 7 May 2005, we knew the result would have far-reaching repercussions.

If we won this game and Liverpool lost the next day to Arsenal, playing away at Highbury, we’d finish fourth in the table and could qualify for the European Champions League for the first time in years.

It was tight against Newcastle until just before half-time. The Magpies had their chances but kept failing to convert. Then, in the forty-third minute, we won a free kick and Mikel Arteta, the brilliant Spanish midfielder who’d come to us on loan from Real Sociedad, sent a perfect ball in for David Weir to head home. After the interval, in the fifty-ninth minute, Arteta shaped up again, this time to shoot with his left.

I made a run on his right shoulder, just in front of the back four. Mikel scuffed the ball with his left foot and I stayed in my run as the ball came straight to me. I took a good first touch, adjusted, set the ball. The goalkeeper, Shay Given, stood tall as I reached the penalty spot. I moved to put the ball into the right-hand corner, forcing Given to lean left, but I’d given him the eyes and whipped it across his body.

Giving the keeper the eyes is a perfect way to feint mentally—look one way and shoot the other—sending him in the wrong direction. The ball lashed high into the back of the net.

I remember glancing up into the stands to see fans shooting up like dominoes in reverse: all these people leaping in waves to their feet and a roar from our home supporters.

Mayhem. Back-slapping, laughing, cheering, drinks and food flying everywhere. I curved my run, screaming down the touchline to where our dugout was.

I knew then—as did all the fans at Goodison—that we’d done something special for Everton. We had to win to finish fourth and we’d done it, putting Liverpool in the position of having to win away against Arsenal. They didn’t. The Reds lost 3–1. We secured our place and qualified for a play-off in the Champions League.

Everything that Everton had been through the season before—the controversial selling of Wayne Rooney, the purchase of Marcus Bent and me—that was now left behind.

Every week of that first season you’d been hearing it in the news or reading it online: “When is Everton’s bubble going to burst?” Among the players, we never felt the bubble was in danger of bursting. We weren’t looking at the big picture, the overall span of the season. We just took it one game at a time. “Come on, lads, we just need one point.” Or: “Come on, boys, these three points are ours.”

All season long, day after day, we continued to grind out wins. We never let up, not a single match. Injured players strapped themselves up and hit the park like they were perfectly fit.

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