Although his spell at Everton was only a short one, Don Hutchison was left enamoured by the second club on Merseyside he had the pleasure of playing for.
As one of few players to have starred for both Liverpool and the Toffees, the 52-year-old was a combative midfielder who featured for plenty of other admirable Premier League sides.
Even playing for his national team too, the Gateshead-born Scotsman stood out during one of the darker periods in Everton’s history, and is still remembered with fondness.
His latest story details exactly what made it such a tumultuous spell.
How Don Hutchison became Everton captain
The story he recounted on Everton’s official website was a long one, but certainly worth a read, depicting a true battle between player and manager which resulted in a strangely pleasant ending.
Hutchison started: ‘I sat on the bench and Walter didn’t look at the game for the last five minutes, he stared down the line at me. He wanted me to shake my head or murmur something about him and I could feel him staring at me.
‘I said to myself, ‘The crowd have let him know he’s made a bad decision, he’s going to come for you afterwards – just take it on the chin’.
‘So the game finished 0-0 and he has come in and started having a right go at me.’
Things then took a fierce escalation: ‘Then all of a sudden, because I wasn’t reacting, he’s picked a water bottle up and launched it at me. It’s exploded on the wall behind me above my head and landed by my right foot, and as it’s landed I’ve volleyed it back at Walter.
‘That’s exactly what he needed. He leaped over the bench with all the Lucozade bottles on and got me by the throat.
‘He pinned me to the wall and growled, ‘Get your gear on, get out and go home. You’re never playing for this football club again.’
But then, Smith explained the reasons behind his fury: ’He said, ‘Would you say Dunc’s a hard man?’ I said ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Waggy’? I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘David Unsworth’? I said, ‘Yeah’. He said where were all those hard men when I had you up against the wall? You’ll be Club captain Monday morning. I swear that’s how the conversation went.’
A tumultuous period for Everton
Having joined under Howard Kendall, his praise for the player meant little when the manager was not long replaced by Walter Smith.
This was what sparked the eventual deterioration in the relationship which led to Hutchison’s regretful exit, and one he never really wanted to make.
Merely wanting some parity with the club’s top earners, as his play had merited, Smith’s refusal to deliver unsurprisingly led to a breakdown which saw him sold to Sunderland.
And even though his time at Goodison Park was marred with relegation battles and in-fighting, Hutchison to this day continues to defend Everton whenever he gets the chance, using his platforms across ESPN and talkSPORT to do so.
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