The Merseyside derby is synonymous with the annual meetings between Everton and Liverpool. The two clubs have faced off with each other hundreds of times over more than a century and will do battle at Goodison Park for the final time tonight, but back in 2001, Merseyside’s other club showed up to gatecrash the party.
Tranmere Rovers made the short trip across the Mersey to face Everton on January 27th 2001 having drawn the Toffees in the 4th round of the FA Cup.
At the time, Rovers were in Division One (now The Championship) and had become something of a “cup team” at the turn of the millennium. They reached the 6th round of the FA Cup a season earlier, beating Premier League sides West Ham United and Sunderland before crashing out to an Alan Shearer-led Newcastle United.
Even more impressively, Rovers made it all the way to the final of the 1999/2000 League Cup, narrowly losing out to Leicester City at Wembley.
By January 2001, Everton were a shadow of the club that had seen such success in the 1980s, a surprise FA Cup triumph in 1995 very much an anomaly, sandwiched between two last-gasp final day relegation survivals in 1994 and 1998. David Moyes’ first spell as manager was still a year away, and the generational talents of Wayne Rooney wouldn’t grace the first team for another 18 months.
The tie was sprinkled with scouse subplots, Tranmere were managed by 80’s Liverpool icon John Aldridge, while his assistant, Kevin Sheedey, had been a cult hero for Everton in the same decade.
Rovers’ major shareholder Peter Johnson had been Everton’s chairman when they won the FA Cup in 1995 and Paul Rideout, the man who scored Everton’s cup final winner, was now a Tranmere player.
The plan was for Everton to coast past their Merseyside neighbours but Tranmere’s Steve Yates took it upon himself to personally tear up that script, his outrageous 22nd minute header from Jason Koumas’ cross looped over Toffees keeper Thomas Myhre and into the net to give the visitors the lead.
Thirteen minutes later Everton’s worst fears were quickly becoming reality, and Koumas was involved again.
This time his spectacular first-time right-footed strike from the edge of the box again left Myhre stranded and doubled Rovers’ lead, leaving the Premier League side shellshocked going into half time.
Any hopes of an Everton fightback after the interval were dealt a fatal blow on 62 minutes when Steve Yates met Koumas’ corner with a bullet header, sending Tranmere into the fifth round as 3-0 winners and writing himself into Rovers’ folklore, with the game being forever remembered as “St. Yates Day” by the Tranmere faithful, but strangely not by the man himself.
Speaking with Tranmere Rovers Official Matchday Program, broadcaster and Rovers fan Steve Bower told of a chance meeting with the ex-striker:
“Many, many years later, I was covering a game at Bristol Rovers and Steve Yates was on the staff, he came out and we had a chat.
“I said, ‘Yatesy, there’s a day every year, it’s called St. Yates Day!’
“Blissfully unaware, because he’s never been back to Wirral or Merseyside since, and he couldn’t believe it!”
As luck would have it, Tranmere were drawn against their other Merseyside neighbours Liverpool in the 6th round of the FA Cup, with the Reds making the short trip to Birkenhead.
Although Rovers’ twice pegged back Liverpool’s lead, in the end it was a bridge too far as Liverpool left Prenton Park with a 4-2 victory on their way to lifting the FA Cup later that season.
