The Current Donkey

Everton won the League in 1969-70 and at the start of a new decade we stood poised to dominate English football. Of course it didn’t happen and there were many factors that contributed to the fall from grace that lasted throughout the 70’s. One of the early reasons was a lack of goals. In 1971-72 our top League scorers, Joe Royle and Dave Johnson, had managed just 9 goals each. Royle hit a rich vein of form at the start of the following season but by the time Ipswich Town arrived for a League match at the end of October 1972, the injuries that eventually saw his Everton career curtailed had really started to bite. Royle missed his first game of the season that day and in fact didn’t play again in the whole campaign. Royle’s partner so far that season had been David Johnson, only just 21 at the start of the Ipswich game and already a hugely promising forward with a knack of scoring goals on all sorts of debuts - Youth Cup, Central League, League, FA Cup, League Cup, Europe and the Derby! With Royle facing a lengthy spell on the sidelines the talk was naturally about who Harry Catterick would sign to partner Johnson up front. The Ipswich game ended 2-2 with one of the East Anglian scorers being a certain Rod Belfitt. The Catt was obviously impressed by what he saw because he signed him. Nothing wrong with that on the surface perhaps. The trouble was that it was an exchange deal and Dave Johnson headed off in the opposite direction to Portman Road.

Rod Belfitt

It is understating things somewhat to say that Everton didn’t get the best of the deal. Belfitt made his debut in our next match – a 1-0 defeat at Crystal Palace – and then in the next match, his home debut against Manchester City, he achieved the remarkable feat of scoring in successive matches at Goodison for 2 different teams. That goal, which couldn’t prevent a 3-2 defeat, was one of only 3 that he was to score for Everton in just 17 starts. Yes, there were mitigating circumstances – Everton were a team in decline and his striking partners included the likes of Bernie Wright and Joe Harper – but, despite being an honest journeyman, Belfitt was just too hopeless to ever cut it as an Everton player. He seemed to lack confidence from the start and was never anything other than ill-at-ease during his 11 months at the club. He struggled in almost every game and it was a blessing when he was sold to Sunderland in October 1973. As for David Johnson, well he scored 35 times for Ipswich and then another 55 for Liverpool, winning 3 League titles, 2 European Cups and a host of other honours. By the time he re-signed for Everton in 1982 he was almost as poor as Rod Belfitt had been. Trouble was, by that stage he'd had 10 years of success at the highest level away from Everton. Belfitt didn't even get 15 minutes of fame at Goodison.

Previous Donkeys

Click on a photo below to see a brief summary of the career of the player concerned.
Each player has appeared in the title bar above in previous weeks.

Glenn Keeley	Bernie Wright	Brett Angell
	Mike Milligan