Bill Kenwright lived an Everton dream and his legacy will endure for city of Liverpool

When Everton broke ground on their new stadium project in 2021, Bill Kenwright proclaimed: “We’re leaving something beautiful for something astonishing. May we have well over a hundred years of happiness here too – I think we will – and I think I’ll be here for all of them!”

Everton’s long-serving chairman who has passed away aged 78 never got the chance to watch a match at their future home on the banks of the Mersey but he might now be there in spirit.

It’s an occupational hazard in football with its ephemeral nature and fickle fortunes that even the most popular and successful figures can be restricted to a finite shelf life when it comes to being at the top of the tree and if players and managers are bound by this then chairmen and board members – like Prime Ministers – are afforded even less sympathy.

While different fans will have different opinions of Kenwright's time at Everton, there can be little doubt he loved the football club he had supported since childhood. He was also a proud and fitting ambassador for Liverpool and many causes important to the city. For many Evertonians, he was ultimately one of their own.

A lifelong Blue

Educated at Booker Avenue County Primary School and then Liverpool Institute High School for Boys – and someone who recalled tales of watching Everton matches in the fitful 1950s from Goodison’s notoriously brutal ‘Boys’ Pen’ – nobody could deny his lifelong true Blue credentials.

The actor turned theatre impresario represented a throwback to an earlier age of football chairmen, the ‘local boy done good’ but those days are now largely in the past. Tellingly, Blackburn Rovers’ benefactor Jack Walker who ploughed his steel industry fortune into the Ewood Park club and bankrolled their