Pat's Van
Player Valuation: £70m
Some may know of this already, others may not, an interesting read none the less...
from royal blue view...
To say that William Ralph Dean was the Pelé of 1920s Birkenhead would be a little exaggerative, perhaps harsh: for Pelé, rather, was the Dean of 1960s São Paulo. William disliked his nickname ‘Dixie’ just as Edison hated ‘Pelé’, yet both were goal-getters supreme: Dean scored 349 times in 399 Everton appearances, Pelé 589 in 605 for Santos.
Eighty years on, lessons in Dean’s legend remain a staple of being raised an Evertonian. I, as I’m sure many others will have done, sat on my grandfather’s knee and listened with intent as I was told of this superheroic specimen of centre-forward: of the hat-tricks scored at will, of how he would mingle with supporters as he caught the bus to the match, of how he hung in the anticipative Goodison air to nod in his sixtieth goal of the 1927/28 season.
Such was his superiority over his peers that he’d be a hundred million pound player in today’s money and no mistake: don’t let the Premiership generation tell you otherwise just because you got the odd ‘cricket score’. Dixie was a goal-scoring phenomenon. Joe Mercer, a teammate, said “I’ve seen 2,000 people following him around in places like Switzerland, Germany and France. He was bigger and better than life”.
Everton’s history books are dominated by Dean’s incredible, never-to-be-beaten statistics and some of the Dixie anecdotes – such as his recovery from a motorcycle accident which left him with a fractured skull and one less testicle – are well known. Others, though, are less documented, and one such tale is the story of how Saint Domingo’s most celebrated son stood up to Adolf Hitler and his program of oppression.
In May 1932, Everton, despite having scored just a single goal in the last four games of the season, won the title – their fourth – by two points from Arsenal. You won’t need me to name the 46-goal top scorer. Days later they took the train from Lime Street to London Euston, sailed from Parkeston Quay, Harwich, to the Hook of Holland and travelled by rail to Hanover, the first stop on a six-game post-season tour of Germany which would also take in fixtures at Dresden, Breslau (now in Poland), Berlin, Nürnberg and Cologne.
The six games were to take place over a period of just fifteen days: a tough ask for Everton’s 17-man squad, though I can’t imagine that Sagar, Cresswell and Dean whined half as much as some of today’s footballers would do. There’d be no “it’s been a long grueling season, I just need to recharge the batteries”. If “actually, boss, my hamstring’s a bit tight”, then you could come along and watch. Forget swanning off to Barbados: instead, a tour of Nazi Germany.
Hitler, having sourced support amongst the many Germans suffering from the great depression, had steered a party with a membership of 60 in 1920 to one of the most powerful in the land by the time Everton came to visit in 1932. It wasn’t until 1933 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor that the Nazis really began to exert their horrendous policies, but it was still clear in the years previous that they were the growing and frighteningly totalitarian force in the country.
Everton won two, drew three and lost one of the fixtures, yet the most significant aspect of the tour was a political statement of defiance rather than any of the footballing exhibitions. Everton were under orders from Hitler’s henchmen to give the Nazi salute prior to kick-off, but Dixie Dean and his own troops staunchly refused. When they played in Dresden the spectators included Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hermann Göring, both of whom were later sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity. Von Ribbentrop was a confidant of Hitler: Göring the founder of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force. They were two of the most powerful and feared men around. Everton did not salute.
Six years later, although the full extent of the Nazi regime’s atrocities would not be fully uncovered until after the Second World War, Hitler’s rearmament of Germany and plans to conquer Europe were a cause of great concern. An England team playing in Berlin in 1938 reluctantly gave the salute under warning from Sir Neville Henderson, the British ambassador to the German capital, that the continental tension was now such that it “only needed a spark to set Europe alight”.
However, Aston Villa’s players refused to carry out the gesture just a few days later, exchanging the one-armed salute for a two-fingered one. They, just as an Everton side captained by Dixie Dean had done six years earlier, defied the Nazis.
from this link - http://royalblueview.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/when-dixie-defied-the-nazis/
from royal blue view...
To say that William Ralph Dean was the Pelé of 1920s Birkenhead would be a little exaggerative, perhaps harsh: for Pelé, rather, was the Dean of 1960s São Paulo. William disliked his nickname ‘Dixie’ just as Edison hated ‘Pelé’, yet both were goal-getters supreme: Dean scored 349 times in 399 Everton appearances, Pelé 589 in 605 for Santos.
Eighty years on, lessons in Dean’s legend remain a staple of being raised an Evertonian. I, as I’m sure many others will have done, sat on my grandfather’s knee and listened with intent as I was told of this superheroic specimen of centre-forward: of the hat-tricks scored at will, of how he would mingle with supporters as he caught the bus to the match, of how he hung in the anticipative Goodison air to nod in his sixtieth goal of the 1927/28 season.
Such was his superiority over his peers that he’d be a hundred million pound player in today’s money and no mistake: don’t let the Premiership generation tell you otherwise just because you got the odd ‘cricket score’. Dixie was a goal-scoring phenomenon. Joe Mercer, a teammate, said “I’ve seen 2,000 people following him around in places like Switzerland, Germany and France. He was bigger and better than life”.
Everton’s history books are dominated by Dean’s incredible, never-to-be-beaten statistics and some of the Dixie anecdotes – such as his recovery from a motorcycle accident which left him with a fractured skull and one less testicle – are well known. Others, though, are less documented, and one such tale is the story of how Saint Domingo’s most celebrated son stood up to Adolf Hitler and his program of oppression.
In May 1932, Everton, despite having scored just a single goal in the last four games of the season, won the title – their fourth – by two points from Arsenal. You won’t need me to name the 46-goal top scorer. Days later they took the train from Lime Street to London Euston, sailed from Parkeston Quay, Harwich, to the Hook of Holland and travelled by rail to Hanover, the first stop on a six-game post-season tour of Germany which would also take in fixtures at Dresden, Breslau (now in Poland), Berlin, Nürnberg and Cologne.
The six games were to take place over a period of just fifteen days: a tough ask for Everton’s 17-man squad, though I can’t imagine that Sagar, Cresswell and Dean whined half as much as some of today’s footballers would do. There’d be no “it’s been a long grueling season, I just need to recharge the batteries”. If “actually, boss, my hamstring’s a bit tight”, then you could come along and watch. Forget swanning off to Barbados: instead, a tour of Nazi Germany.
Hitler, having sourced support amongst the many Germans suffering from the great depression, had steered a party with a membership of 60 in 1920 to one of the most powerful in the land by the time Everton came to visit in 1932. It wasn’t until 1933 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor that the Nazis really began to exert their horrendous policies, but it was still clear in the years previous that they were the growing and frighteningly totalitarian force in the country.
Everton won two, drew three and lost one of the fixtures, yet the most significant aspect of the tour was a political statement of defiance rather than any of the footballing exhibitions. Everton were under orders from Hitler’s henchmen to give the Nazi salute prior to kick-off, but Dixie Dean and his own troops staunchly refused. When they played in Dresden the spectators included Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hermann Göring, both of whom were later sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity. Von Ribbentrop was a confidant of Hitler: Göring the founder of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force. They were two of the most powerful and feared men around. Everton did not salute.
Six years later, although the full extent of the Nazi regime’s atrocities would not be fully uncovered until after the Second World War, Hitler’s rearmament of Germany and plans to conquer Europe were a cause of great concern. An England team playing in Berlin in 1938 reluctantly gave the salute under warning from Sir Neville Henderson, the British ambassador to the German capital, that the continental tension was now such that it “only needed a spark to set Europe alight”.
However, Aston Villa’s players refused to carry out the gesture just a few days later, exchanging the one-armed salute for a two-fingered one. They, just as an Everton side captained by Dixie Dean had done six years earlier, defied the Nazis.
from this link - http://royalblueview.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/when-dixie-defied-the-nazis/
