It was like old times at the Winslow Hotel on Saturday. The pub directly over the road from Goodison Park’s Main Stand was packed with 400 people from lunchtime until late in the evening.
There were singers and a comedian, with former Everton players present to soak up the atmosphere, including 1980s hero Kevin Sheedy, for many years a regular customer.
But sadly for licensee Dave Bond, Saturday’s crowd were there to say goodbye. The red-brick Winslow, which first opened in 1886, predating Goodison by six years, called last orders for the final time at Saturday’s farewell party.
A portrait of club legend Dixie Dean hangs outside the pub (Photo: Getty)It is eight months now since Everton’s men’s team departed their old home for the Hill Dickinson Stadium, two miles away. The pubs that filled with fans on Goodison matchdays have suffered since – none more so than the place on Goodison Road itself.
“It’s been bad,” Bond says. “On a matchday you might as well be closed. I actually lose money by opening.”
Bond, an Everton supporter since his boyhood in Ireland, has managed the Winslow since 2014 when it reopened after a brief closure.
At the start of this season, he responded to the challenge of the stadium move by organising a return coach service to the Hill Dickinson Stadium followed by post-match entertainment in the pub.
“We averaged between 20 and 30 people so then you’re losing money each time,” he says.
Everton’s women play their home games at Goodison Park (Photo: Getty)While Everton’s women now call Goodison home, they are only playing eight Women’s Super League games there this term.
And though Bond opened the Winslow on Friday, ahead of the WSL evening fixture against Brighton, he says the clientele for a women’s game “are only coming in for an hour and they’re not drinkers”.
Indeed, he estimates that a women’s matchday yields “between three and five per cent” of the profit from when the men played a game over the road.
Instead, his busiest days this season have been for two men’s fixtures at Anfield, the Merseyside derby followed by Arsenal’s visit. Kevin Campbell, the late Arsenal and Everton striker, had been a Winslow regular and, thanks to a social-media promotion, around 100 supporters from London descended on the pub that day.
“Kevin was a great friend and patron and the connection with him was something that pulled on people’s heartstrings – that was a big help to get fans in,” Bond says.
“But I’ll be honest with you, my heart wouldn’t be in it, my soul wouldn’t be in it, making this an away pub. It was an Everton pub for 140 years. I couldn’t be involved if it was just going to be away fans as it’s lost that identity then.”
A tribute to former striker Kevin Campbell who died in 2024 (Photo: Steven Morgan)That identity, more than a century in the making, is reflected by the flags, scarves and artwork that adorn the Winslow’s interior (for now, at least). Dixie Dean was a regular drinker there. Norman Greenhalgh, a member of Everton’s 1939 title-winning side, ran the pub in the 1950s.
Captain Mike Lyons brought the entire Everton team in to toast an FA Cup victory over Liverpool in 1981. Joe Royle had a celebratory drink there after starting his reign as manager with a derby success in 1994.
Bond recalls that when David Moyes called in for a pre-match interview with broadcaster TNT Sports prior to last April’s fixture against Arsenal, the Scot said: “They should have a frame of my dad up on the wall. He used to drink in here all the time.”
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He remembers the long queue snaking outside at 7.45am on the morning of Goodison’s final Premier League fixture last May. He had acquired a special licence to start serving at nine. Such were the numbers that “we couldn’t move in here before we’d even started serving.”
Bond is preparing to open an Everton-themed bar close to the Hill Dickinson Stadium, Dixie’s on Dickson Street, next month. But first for Saturday’s sad farewell, which will feature a cluster of ex-players as guest speakers, including Ian Snodin, Graham Stuart and Alan Stubbs.
“It’s going to be like a matchday because that’s what this is – a matchday pub,” Bond concludes. “I think it’s the send-off that this pub needs, considering it’s six years older than Goodison. They talk about the ‘Old Lady’ … well, this lady, she’s fairly old as well.”
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