Bill Kenwright was Mr Everton – he always did what he felt was best for the club

It was in April 2013 when Bill Kenwright stood in front of the Kop at a Hillsborough memorial service and declared – “they took on the wrong city – and they took on the wrong mums”.

As a West End producer and soap actor, Kenwright wasn’t short of the odd line but this wasn’t a throwaway few words fit for Coronation Street, this was real and from the heart. Kenwright was Mr Everton – but he didn’t only ‘get’ the blue half of Liverpool.

So when he spoke that day in tribute to the 97 victims of the disaster with a pointed reference to the authorities who tried to blame one of the worst tragedies at a football stadium on the Liverpool fans, it garnered respect on both halves of the city. A sign of the man he was. He was Liverpool born but in no doubt blue.

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Kenwright died on Monday night at the age of 78 after a lifetime as an Everton fan, board member, owner and chairman. His ambition was never to become the club’s owner. As he once said in an interview, “When people ask me if I dreamed of buying Everton, my dream was to sit up in the stand and not paddle in wee.”

He was recounting his tales from the Gwladys Street end as a kid when he had holes in his shoes and was just like anyone else on the terrace as the urine came down from the back of the stand. Everton was in him. It was not just a business to him.

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He was first on the board at Goodison Park in 1989 and, by 1999, he had the largest shareholding. The club had debts of at least £15m at the time, were offloading star players and were struggling to bring in new ones. Kenwright saved the club from financial meltdown and set about restoring it with realism. But his first game since taking on the majority of the club, was a 5-0 win over Sunderland on Boxing Day in 1999.

It was something a theatre producer would love to write but there would be much more drama to come. Over the course of his stewardship – he became chairman in 2004 – there were plenty of highs. He was at the helm when David Moyes was at Everton and the Toffees qualified for the Champions League in 2005, punching above their financial weight for one.

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But as the money in football continued to balloon, Kenwright felt the strain of keeping Everton competitive as Middle East petro-dollars changed the outlook of the Premier League. There were failed stadium projects, fallouts and fan protests.

"If the right person stands in front of me and wants to take this club forward, then I will sell," Bill Kenwright said in November 2007. Yet in the years that followed buyers went for other clubs. Despite calls for him to go, Kenwright insisted he wouldn’t sell to the wrong person.

In the years between 2007 and when the right person finally arrived, Everton battled for top-four spots, reached an FA Cup final and continued to fight above their means. Kenwright believed when he sold shares to give Farhad Moshiri the majority stake in 2016, that the Iranian billionaire would invest heavily in the club so they could compete at the top.

There’s no doubt Moshiri invested but they haven’t been able to compete. Kenwright remained as chairman and bore the brunt of so much fan anger in recent years that attending games at Goodison Park became impossible as his club fought off relegation last season.

There may not have been a fitting finale for Kenwright at Goodison but as the curtain comes down for his great life, he should be remembered as a man who did what he always believed was best for his true love. That was Everton Football Club.

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