William Ralph "Dixie" Dean (22 January 1907 – 1 March 1980) was an English footballer who played as a centre forward. Dean holds the long-standing record for the most goals scored in a single season in top-flight English football, with 60 league goals in the 1927/28 season alone. He is regarded as one of the greatest centre-forwards of all time and was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002.
Born in Birkenhead, he began his career at his hometown club Tranmere Rovers, before moving on to Everton, the club he had supported as a child. A prolific goalscorer, he was particularly known for having a penchant for scoring goals with his head, courtesy of his elevation and athleticism, as well as his powerful and accurate heading ability, which has led pundits to describe him as one of the greatest aerial specialists of all time. Dean played the majority of his career at Everton, before injuries caught up with him and he moved on to new challenges at Notts County, and eventually Sligo Rovers.
In Everton's league championship-winning season of 1927–28, Dean scored a record 60 league goals (out of the team's 102), having played in 39 of Everton's 42 games. That season, he also made his debut for England: he went on to score eighteen goals in sixteen appearances for his country.
A statue of Dean was unveiled outside Goodison Park in May 2001. A year later, he became one of 22 players inducted into the inaugural English Football Hall of Fame.
Dean was born at 313 Laird Street in Birkenhead, Cheshire, across the River Mersey from Liverpool. Dean's family on both sides hailed from Chester. He was the grandson of Ralph Brett, a train driver who drove the royal train during the reign of George V. Dean grew up as a supporter of Everton thanks to the efforts of his father, also named William, who took him to a match during the 1914–15 title-winning season.
Dean's childhood coincided with the First World War, and between the ages of seven and eleven he delivered cow's milk to local families as part of the war effort: "Well, it was war time you see, so you were grafting all the time. I used to take milk out. I'd be up at half-past four in the morning and go down and get the ponies and the milk floats, then I'd come out to this place in Upton, between Upton and Arrowe Park, and Burgess' Farm was there. We used to collect the milk in the big urns and take it out to people's houses, serving it out of the ladle. And not only that, you had an allotment, and that was in school time. And there was no such thing as pinching and stealing and all that bloody caper. In those days, you were growing all that stuff and you needed it for the war time."
Dean attended Laird Street School but felt he received no formal education: "My only lesson was football ... I used to give the pens out on Friday afternoons ... the ink, and the chalks. That was the only job I had in school ... I never had any lessons." When he turned eleven, he attended Albert (Memorial) Industrial School, a borstal school in Birkenhead, because of the football facilities on offer. The Dean family home had little room for him due to the family's size; Dean was happy with the arrangement, since he could play on the school's football team. Dean falsely told fellow pupils he had been caught stealing, since he wanted to be "one of the boys".
He left school at fourteen and worked for Wirral Railway as an apprentice fitter; his father also worked there and had been working since he was eleven years old for Great Western Railway. The elder Dean later became a train driver before moving to Birkenhead to work for Wirral Railway, to be closer to his future wife (and William Jr's mother) Sarah. Dean's father would later retire with the company.
Dean took a night job so that he could concentrate on his first love, football: "The other two apprentice fitters, they didn't like the night job because there were too many bloody rats around there, coming out of the Anglo-Oil company and the Vacuum Oil Company ... rats as big as whippets. So I took their night job, and of course, I could always have a game of football then." Dean would kick the trespassing rats against the wall.
The sons of Dean's manager at Wirral Railway were directors of New Brighton, and they were interested in signing Dean. However, Dean told the club he was not interested in signing and instead played for local team Pensby United in Pensby. It was at Pensby United where Dean attracted the attention of a Tranmere Rovers scout.
Some said that Dean and his family disliked his nickname, and preferred people to call him "Bill" or "Billy". The popular theory regarding how Dean acquired his nickname is that he did so in his youth, perhaps due to his dark complexion and hair (which bore a resemblance to people from the Southern United States). In Dean's obituary in The Times, Geoffrey Green suggested that the nickname was taken from a "Dixie" song that was popular during Dean's childhood; there was "something of the Uncle Tom about his features".
Alternatively, Tranmere Rovers club historian Gilbert Upton uncovered evidence, verified by Dean's godmother, that the name "Dixie" was a corruption of his childhood nickname, Digsy (acquired from his approach to the children's game of tag, where Dean would dig his fist into a girl's back, hence "Digsy").
He played football for Laird Street School, Moreton Bible Class, Heswall and Pensby United. He then joined the professional ranks with his local club, Tranmere Rovers in November 1923. He was sixteen at the time.
Whilst at Tranmere, he was on the receiving end of a tough challenge which resulted in him losing a testicle in a reserve game against Altrincham. Immediately following the challenge, a teammate rubbed the area to ease the pain. Dean shouted, "Don't rub 'em, count 'em!"
In his sixteen months at Tranmere, spanning the 1923–24 and 1924–25 seasons, he scored 27 goals in 30 league appearances. All 27 were in the second of those two seasons, in which he averaged exactly a goal per game. His exploits attracted the interest of many clubs across England, including Arsenal and Newcastle United. Upon leaving Tranmere Rovers, manager Bert Cooke reneged on an agreement to pay ten percent of the transfer fee to Dean. Dean was paid one percent of the fee, which he gave to his parents (who donated it to Birkenhead General Hospital).
His father had taken him to a league game at Goodison Park when he was eight years old. It was a dream come true for Dean, when Everton secretary Thomas H. McIntosh arranged to meet him at the Woodside Hotel in 1925. Dean was so excited that he ran the 2.5 miles (4.0 km) distance from his home in north Birkenhead to the riverside to meet him. He signed for Everton in March 1925, having just turned eighteen.
He later revealed that he expected a £300 signing fee to be given to his parents when he transferred to Everton. They received only £30, and Tranmere Rovers manager Bert Cooke told him "That's all the League will allow". Dean appealed to John McKenna, vice-chairman of the Football Association, but was told "I'm afraid you've signed, and that's it." Dean signed for Everton in March 1925 for £3,000, then a record fee received for any Third Division player, any 18-year old, and any Tranmere Rovers player. He made his debut away to Arsenal, and scored his first Everton goal later that month, at home to Aston Villa. He scored 32 goals in his first full season, 1925–26, benefiting from a change to the offside law. A motorcycling accident at Holywell in north Wales in summer 1926 left Dean with a fractured skull and jaw, and doctors were unsure whether he would be able to play again. In his next game for Everton, he scored using his head, leading Evertonians to joke that the doctor left a metal plate in Dean's head. He re-joined the first team in October 1926, scoring in his first game back, away to Leeds United. Dean finished the 1926–27 season with 21 goals from 27 games as Everton avoided relegation by a single place.