'I had unwittingly stumbled upon an exclusive in my childhood home'
- Published
My mother would often say, before she died last year, that there was something valuable in the home in which she had lived with her husband George.
Was it an heirloom or an antique, I wondered.
George Watts, my stepfather, was chairman and director at Everton while also working for the club's owner John Moores at the Littlewoods Organisation.
He was an astute businessman and dealt with club finances. As a youngster, I can recall legendary forward Bob Latchford coming to the house to discuss contracts.
When George died in 1988, fellow club director and solicitor Keith Tamlin handled his estate. The filing cabinet rammed with club paraphernalia was emptied - except for one key document.
It would remain undisturbed for a further 37 years until last summer, when I went through an experience familiar to many people who have lost a parent - one of painstakingly sifting through decades of paperwork.
There were long-out-of-date policies, receipts, family photographs, work mementos and then, undetected at the back of one of the steel grey drawers, was a brown envelope marked 'Everton: Season Ticket Sales'.
It seemed innocuous enough, with a running total of revenues from a couple of seasons in the 1970s.
But what caught my eye was a schedule of undated flights to Athens from Manchester, accompanied by several copies of a typed contract, one of which was annotated in my stepfather's distinctive, if somewhat indecipherable, handwriting.
Closer inspection revealed an agreement between Everton Football Club and the man who in 12 years had taken Leeds United from Second Division also-rans to winners of every major domestic honour and two Fairs Cups - one Donald Revie of Three Chimneys, Sandmoor Drive, Leeds.
More than half a century after the contract was drawn up I had, quite unwittingly, stumbled upon an exclusive in my childhood family home - one that saw my two worlds collide as a boyhood Everton fan who has covered the Whites on BBC Radio Leeds for 20 years.
Read how Adam discovered the Everton contract Don Revie never signed
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