DIXIE DEAN

Tranmere Rovers might not be everyone's favourite "cup of tea" but today you will be able to get to the local pub carrying some fascinating facts with which to stun your mates; unless your drinking partners also buy 442 Magazine.

In 1924, Dixie Dean, known to his parents as William Ralph Dean, made his Tranmere debut. Dixie would soon be snapped up by Everton and would break records. A horror tackle in a reserve match against Altrincham, which meant the studs of a boot reached his "groin and ball sack", caused him to lose a testicle. Years later, Dean said that he spotted the "perpetrator" in a local bar and thumped him; the lad had to go to hospital, needless to say. 

Even the most ill-informed football fan knows that Bill ‘Dixie’ Dean scored a record breaking 60 league goals in the 1927/28 season. But fewer are aware that just 12 months before the start of that remarkable campaign, Dean nearly died. The young Dean suffered appalling injuries in a motorcycle accident in North Wales, with a girlfriend on pillion. Doctors were afraid he could not live for many hours. His survival astonished them. When recovery was assured, the medical pronouncement was ‘This man will never be able to play football again.’

Dean said, “As a matter of fact I think the skull fracture knitted twice as hard, so they tell me, and it considerably helped me with the old heading trick.” Opposing defenders suspected more than mere Mother Nature at work. Such was Dean’s prowess with his head, that fanciful tales emerged that the youngster had a metal plate inserted into his head, during surgery. The stories were nonsense, but underlined the aura around the man. Despite his impeccable disciplinary record, Dean was clearly no shrinking violet.

Dean was never intimidated – at home or abroad. On tour in Germany, against a Dresden team, featuring 10 of the German national side, the home side insisted that the game be played with a size four football. Dean refused and when the German captain carried the smaller ball out onto the pitch and placed it on the centre-circle, Dean picked it up, carried it to the touchline followed by the skipper and the referee – and booted the offending article out of the ground. “Now we’ll play with this one – the size five,” he declared – and they did. Dean’s ability as a goalscorer is, quite rightly, celebrated – but his prowess as a marksman should never cloud the fact that he was also one of Merseyside football’s hardest men. AND here is one I did earlier on Dixie.

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