From the group of Everton players I watched lift the League title at a packed Goodison Park in 1970, with the passing of Tommy Wright on Monday, there remain, by my reckoning, only 6 players of that wonderful but slender squad still alive to tell the tale.
Colin Harvey and Joe Royle will be the most familiar names to those not old enough to have witnessed that marvellous team. It had, of course, the famous midfield trio of Harvey, Alan Ball and Howard Kendall as its engine. Also still around are Johnny
Morrissey, Alan Whittle (uncle of recent Blue Tom Davies), Roger Kenyon and Tommy Jackson.
If the afore-mentioned hugely talented trio of midfielders, known as The Holy Trinity, was the engine then to make the machine move effectively you needed wide players of mobility, pace and intelligence.
Tommy Wright was a key part of that machine. He played all 42 matches of that successful League campaign, a miracle by modern standards.
He was perhaps ahead of his time in many ways, an overlapping right back in a 4-3-3 formation who could deliver pinpoint crosses at pace. He simply never hid, always made himself available even when, frankly, he looked exhausted. Just ask Joe Royle who had been on the receiving end of such quality for years. Those two, injuries aside, played for Everton for the best part of 8 or 9 years together and when injuries finally took their toll on Tommy, he was very difficult to replace. Part of the rapid decline of that fantastic team was not only the controversial and untimely sale of talisman Alan Ball and a debilitating injury to Harvey, but the failure to have a quality successor to Wright. Quite simply, in that style of team, he was irreplaceable.
He was converted to right back by our then excellent manager, Harry Catterick, from an inside forward (modern day equivalent is maybe a #8) at an early age whilst playing for Everton C team (yes they had Reserves, A, B and C at that era of the early ‘60s). He was a local boy and came through the ranks along with many others. There was no Academy back then just a fantastic local scouting system which saw the two main clubs of the football-mad city go to war over their schoolboy signatures.
He was part of the team that won the FA Cup in 1966, coming from two goals behind to deservedly triumph. In total he played 374 League games for the Blues scoring 4 goals in a 10 year period, 1964 to 1974.
Wright was part of the England team at the Mexico World Cup of 1970 where the oppressive heat had a huge effect on the abilities of an ageing team. Tommy himself did have a hand in one of the goals at that competition though and he earned 12 caps in total.
A little like fellow title winner Alan Whittle, he had a nephew, Billy Wright, who went onto play for the Blues’ first team but without the same success.
I am proud to say I stood watching his relentless running down Everton’s right flank. Opposition defences not only had the gifted right winger Jimmy Husband to contend with, they had the absolute irrepressible “machine” that was Tommy Wright bombing down the touchline.
Tommy Wright (crouched in the centre) during the lull before extra-time in the ill-fated FA Cup Final defeat to West Bromwich Albion in 1968.
RIP Tommy, you will be missed greatly by Evertonians of a certain vintage.
