Royal Blue

Michael Ball is perhaps aptly number three in our Goodison Park: My Home series as he joins Chris Beesley in the ECHO’s Royal Blue studio to look back on his playing career. The lifelong Evertonian explains how he grew up close to Goodison and attended matches regularly from a young age before coming up through the club’s junior ranks and making his senior debut as a 17-year-old under caretaker manager and fellow Scouser Dave Watson in 1997. Ball admits he defied doctor’s orders to play his part in a second ‘Great Escape’ under Howard Kendall the following year but after battling back from injury problems and Walter Smith signing a clutch of other left-backs to be named the club’s player of the year in 2001, he reveals that being told Everton had accepted transfer offers for him that summer when he thought he was on the brink of being offered a new contract with his boyhood team felt like “a dagger in the heart.” Now back watching the Blues from Goodison’s stands as a fan again and offering hard-hitting views