My older sister’s interest in football began around the same time as mine. That was in 1965 when our family were living in the East Midlands and most of the best of football, music, and comedy was originating from Merseyside. A couple of years later, our family moved to the West Midlands, in a region to the west of Birmingham. This was a mixed territory made up of roughly equal numbers of Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion, and Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters (I don’t remember any Birmingham City supporters around that area, but there may have been a few). It was not easy being a young Red in that area, walking down the street proudly with a red and white hat and scarf in an area where none of the local teams wore those colours. For some reason, my sister’s interest in football suddenly dropped to near zero with that move across the centre of the country, but picked up again a few years later with the sudden rise to stardom of Alun Evans.
In September of 1968, Liverpool signed a 19-year old blond-haired golden boy from Wolves for the outrageous sum of £100,000. He was brought in as a long-term replacement for Tony Hately, who himself had shocked the League a year earlier with an almost equally expensive transfer from Chelsea. The difference was that Tony Hately was an established player, possibly at his peak of performance when he arrived at Anfield. Alun Evans had two years with Wolves as a teenaged prodigy before joining Liverpool, which included a famous 14 match summer tour of the United States as part of the Los Angeles Wolves. Several entire professional clubs were brought in and were based in various cities, temporarily changing their name so as to represent their home for the summer. Evans was the junior member of that 17 man LA Wolves squad, and so was mostly used as a substitute against other clubs such as Aberdeen (playing as the Washington Whips), Cagliari (Chicago Mustangs), Hibernian (Toronto City) and Den Haag (San Francisco Golden Gate Gales). Sunderland were also involved in the competition, playing as Vancouver Royals, but that’s another story for some other time.
Bill Shankly’s attention had been drawn to this precocious young player when Liverpool hosted Wolves in 1967. In this particular match, Evans had the gall to make Ron Yeats look average by using his quick turns, sudden changes of direction, and flicks and tricks, and even managing to score against The Mighty Reds. When Shankly found out that he was later available for transfer, he made sure that there was only one place that this promising youngster was going to end up – at Anfield of course.
Alun Evans was signed in September of 1968, making his debut at Anfield and scoring after only ten minutes against Leicester goalkeeper Peter Shilton in a 4-0 win on September 21st. When he arrived at Anfield earlier that week, he assumed that he would be placed into the reserves and would then have to prove himself worthy of a call-up to the senior squad. Shankly soon clarified the situation by growling at him that he wouldn’t pay £100,000 for any player unless he was to be part of the first team, and that he’d be playing against Leicester on the coming Saturday.
At about the same time, plenty of teenage girls were squealing with delight looking at pictures of this golden haired teenager who had suddenly been thrust into the limelight. Even one of the girls at my school in Worcestershire, who was a Manchester United supporter because of her infatuation with George Best, was swooning over the gorgeous young Alun. Coincidentally (I’m sure), this was also the time when my sister’s interest in football, and Liverpool FC in particular, was aroused once more.
Coincidentally, my sister was going out with a guy at that time who was a dedicated Wolves supporter. She had no idea how much it must have seriously irritated him when she talked of how she adored this golden haired boy, and I had my share of fun by repeatedly showing him pictures of Shankly and the rest of the team with various trophies and delighting in pointing out how long it had been since Wolves had won anything. It was icing on the cake for me, or salt in the wounds for him, when I was able to brag about Liverpool’s ability to attract the best players in the country, including the teenage sensation Alun Evans.
It was inevitable that Wolves would play Liverpool at some point during their relationship, but nobody could have predicted what actually happened. It was only a week after Evans’s debut at Anfield that he returned to Molineux on September 28th 1968 to face his old club. My sister’s boyfriend Davey was there in the crowd at Molineux that day after looking forward to it all week. It was not a good day for him as Liverpool won 6-0 with Evans scoring two against his former club, in only his third appearance for Liverpool. To make matters worse, my sister had no idea what was going on that afternoon, but had made arrangements the day before the big match to meet her boyfriend for a night out later on the Saturday evening. Before she left, I couldn’t resist telling her to ask Davey if he had enjoyed himself at the match, without letting on what the score was. As she was somewhat gullible at that time, she went out and actually did ask him about it, and of course he strongly suspected that both of us were gleefully rubbing it in (oh, the mere suggestion of such a possibility!).
I wouldn’t say that Wolves’ loss to Liverpool was the end of their relationship, but I can be sure that it was a part of the cause of their eventual break-up. Just imagine if you were going out with a girl who turned out to have a crush on Wayne Rooney. Okay, perhaps that’s too far-fetched but you probably get the idea. I couldn’t live with something like that, and neither could he.
Football-wise, that should have been the beginning of a glorious future for Alun Evans; but that’s not the way the script was written for him. Instead, that first season at Anfield was his best ever, even though he could only score a disappointing seven goals in all. The following season, things went from bad to worse with first a string of injuries causing him to be sidelined for much of the season. Then, during a brief visit back in Wolverhampton, he was at a nightclub with his girlfriend when a psycho attacked him for no apparent reason, smashing a beer glass in his face. The attack was at first suspected to have been made by a disgruntled Wolves supporter, who took out his frustrations in a drunken rage after recognising Evans’s face at the club. As it turned out however, it was not football related at all, just a prisoner who was out on remand at the time and who felt like taking his anger out on someone. Alun was simply the unlucky one to be on the receiving end of this maniac’s actions. The attack left him scarred both physically and emotionally, requiring a hospital visit and nearly 70 stitches to close up the gash in his face.
Alun Evans returned to the side late in the 1970-71 season, appearing in eight out of the last ten fixtures for that campaign, including scoring in the FA Cup semi-final against Everton. He also played in the 1971 FA Cup final, earning a runners-up medal in the 2-1 loss to Arsenal. Another youngster watching that match with interest was Kevin Keegan, who was soon to be the key piece in Shankly’s rebuilt side, and subsequently pushing Evans into a supporting role.
It was a slow start to the following season, with only a handful of appearances in October and November. At least he can be remembered for a hat trick against Bayern Munich, which came in the European Fairs Cup in March of 1971. His transfer to Aston Villa came in January of 1972, where he played for two seasons and earned a League Cup winners’ medal. Following that it was a couple of seasons at Walsall, and then off to Australia to end his playing career with South Melbourne FC, only twelve years after it had started. The semi-professional status of players in that league meant that he had to supplement his wages with other work, which included working in a fish market and selling cars.
His original intention was to stay for a while and then consider his options, but a broken leg put an end to his footballing career at age 35, and then marriage led to him putting down permanent roots and raising a family down under. Since retiring from football, he has chosen to stay in Melbourne, but with frequent visits home to see family members in the Kidderminster area in Worcestershire. He first worked as a delivery driver, and then as a painter and decorator, managing to establish himself in his post-football career and building up his small business and managing to employ four other painters with him.
The story of Alun Evans is a sad one, really. After having so much promise in the early years as a teenager, it seemed to vanish shortly after he went to Liverpool. It can’t have been easy to be told that he was supposed to be taking Tony Hately’s place in the squad, and then later realising that he was also expected to be the new kid to replace Roger Hunt in the future. Perhaps it was the pressure of trying to live up to expectations that brought him down, or it was possibly that he was simply Midas in reverse - transforming anything he touched from golden to ordinary through a series of misfortunes that were beyond his control.
© Keith Perkins, September-23-2010
