Kendall’s Glory Years by Steve Zocek – Review
By Karl Hornsey
Steve Zocek is clearly a man whose love for Everton Football Club runs deep. In 2022, he released Goodison Memories: A Lifetime of Football at Everton, aptly ahead of the club ending their long tenure at the ground before moving to pastures new. Now, he has followed that up with this tribute to former manager Howard Kendall, whose first period in charge of the Toffees during the 1980s produced some of the finest memories that any Evertonian could possibly have.
Kendall was, crucially, given time to build a squad that would ultimately dethrone local rivals Liverpool, and become one of the leading sides in Europe, and Zocek has taken the approach of asking the great and good of that time about their memories of Kendall, whose sad passing in 2015 was mourned by all who knew him. The author has collated more than 60 personal accounts from players who worked under Kendall, building chronologically from 1981 onwards, which gives the reader the sense of how he gradually made his mark, eventually leading to a silverware-laden period that made several of the players household names.
Surprisingly, there is the odd player who declined to be included in this book, but the vast majority very much sing from the same hymn sheet, remembering their time at the club with great fondness, and creating a collective picture of the man both on and off the field. In the days before the Premier League behemoth came into being, there are always likely to be more stories of off-the-field shenanigans that would shock younger followers in this sanitised day and age, but the glowing praise of Kendall for the man he was away from the training ground and spotlight, tells much more about how highly regarded he really was.
“Fascinating snippets”
If I have a fault to find with this book then, while the sheer number of contributors is impressive, that does lead to repetition, as so many of them have the same stories to tell and roughly the same memories of Kendall, understandably so given the relatively short period of time that he was at the club in his first period in charge.
That said, what I love about how Zocek has approached his task, is that he’s taken the harder and more time-consuming option of contacting and tracking down such a fantastic cross-section of former players. While any football fan of the time is familiar with the likes of Peter Reid, Neville Southall and Andy Gray, some of the more fascinating snippets come from players that very few outside of the blue half of Merseyside would know of, and it’s great that they have their chance to talk about their, often brief, time under Kendall. Given the club’s lack of success in the years since Kendall departed, this book is well worth a read to remind us of a bygone age and of a side that might be in danger of being forgotten compared to some of the more high-profile ones, especially those managed by those who enjoyed the limelight much more than Kendall.
‘Kendall’s Glory Years’ by Steve Zocek is published by Pitch Publishing
Karl’s love of writing was piqued at the age of eight, when he won a Blue Peter badge in an essay-writing competition. The location of said badge might be a mystery now, but the memory never fades. Hours spent writing about sport as a teenager, in pre-internet years when you had to make your entertainment, honed his skills, and Karl has worked in TV and radio listings at PA Media for 28 years, and the age of hybrid working means 50% of that can be at home listening to Classic FM and thinking about his next visit to his beloved Yorkshire Dales.
@KarlHornsey, hornskar
