Seven games of the league season to go and Dixie Dean was 15 goals away from beating George Camsell’s record. In his previous 7 games, he scored only 5 goals – a third of his target. Based on form, Dixie Dean might as well have called it quits. However, according to his aforementioned article for the Bexhill-on-Sea Observer, “football is a team game.” Everton were in the race for the First Division title, battling against Huddersfield. So it was very likely that Dean was focussing on that rather than the record, and he aimed to use his natural footballing ability as its very best in order for Everton to win their first league title since the 1914/15 season.
On April 6th, Everton beat Blackburn 4-2, and Dixie Dean scored two of the goals, and he could have had a hat-trick if he hadn’t missed “practically an open goal.” The next day, Dean scored once again in Everton’s 1-1 draw against Bury. However, it was a game he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. During the game, Dixie Dean missed a penalty after it was saved by the Bury goalkeeper. Usually, missing a penalty is really bad. Missing one in front of your own mother is even worse.
I should like to have seen him in a less subdued mood, writes a Daily Courier representative, especially as his mother was watching him on this occasion, this being the third match only she has seen this season. Mrs. Dean told me she was far from a judge, but she thought a draw was a proper reflex of the game.
Everton 1-1 Bury – The Daily Courier, 9th April 1928
The following week, Everton beat Sheffield United 3-1, and Dixie Dean had another brace. As Dean was regaining form, so was Everton, with the Daily Courier calling them “the cock of the league again”. Everton then regained top spot after defeating Newcastle 3-0, with Dean scoring one of the goals – he was then at 51 goals. He needed to a hat-trick a game to beat George Camsell’s record. He fell short of one goal from a hat-trick in the next – he scored two in Everton’s 3-2 victory over Aston Villa, and Everton were looking very likely to become champions.
I think after last night’s result [referring to title rivals Huddersfield’s 2-1 defeat to Burnley] that our chances have increased considerably. We have, in fact, much more than an outside chance if we can secure the remaining four points, and I do not see why we should not. It would be necessary for Huddersfield to win the whole of their remaining matches to oust us from the Championship. This is a pleasing contrast from our position last season [20th, 4 points above relegation zone]. We have made practically no changes in the personnel of the team. All the players who have brought the success we have attained this season were in the team in the closing of last season. We are hoping to celebrate our jubilee as champions. If that is not to be our fortune, we are nonetheless grateful for the great change in our fortunes.
The Everton chairman, Will Cuff, on the club’s title chances – The Daily Courier, 27th April 1928
Dixie Dean needed to score 7 goals in 2 games – a mammoth task. On April 28th, Everton played Burnley and the First Division trophy was firmly in their grip after a 5-3 win. Not only that, Dixie Dean scored FOUR goals.
It was one of [Dean’s] best games of the season. It was in splendid fettle, and appeared to be faster more trustful and more deadly in his shooting than ever. Dean brought his League total of goals to 57, two short of Camsell’s 59 last season.
Burnley 3-5 Everton – The Daily Courier, 30th April 1928
All Dixie Dean had to was score a hat-trick against Arsenal, and he will in sporting annals possibly forever.
A couple of days later, Everton were close to winning the First Division for the first time in 13 years, so Huddersfield needed a result against Aston Villa.
Everton will play the team victorious in the last three League games over Burnley, Aston Villa, and Newcastle United for the vital match with the Arsenal at Goodison Park on Saturday (Kick-off 3-15).
If Huddersfield win today, the match will be invested with extraordinary interest. […] Additional interest will be centred in the Goodison Park clash by reason of Dean’s great challenge to the record English goalscorers, Geo. Camsell, of Middlesbrough, who obtained 59 in 37 League engagements last season. Dean has to score three to set up a new record for the English League.
Preview of Everton v Arsenal – The Daily Courier, 2nd May 1928
Later that day, Huddersfield lost to Aston Villa 3-0, meaning Everton have become First Division champions for the third time.
Everton became League champions for the third time in their career yesterday, when Huddersfield Town, challengers for the honours, received another stagging blow, this time at Villa Park, the home team thrilled Lancashire by a splendid 3-0 victory. […] Everton last won the championship in the season 1914-15 with 46 points out of a possible 76, and they annexed the honour for the first time in 1890-91 with 29 points out of a maximum off 44.
Aston Villa 3-0 Huddersfield – The Daily Courier, 3rd May 1928
The officials of the Everton have received numerous congratulations on the success of the team in winning the championship of the first division of the league. One of the first clubs to send a congratulatory message was Huddersfield Town, the runners-up for the honour. The championship trophy will be handed over to the Everton football club by Mr. John McKenna, president of the league, at the conclusion of the match at Goodison Park tomorrow, when Everton wind-up the season against the Arsenal. Arrangements are being made to broadcast the speeches at the presentation ceremony to all parts of the ground and the club makes a special request that spectators will remain in their places.
They will be able to hear everything, as amplifiers are being fixed up so that speeches will be heard clearly. ‘‘Why we won” is a favourite topic on Merseyside just now and different views have been put forward. In an interview with the “Daily Post”, Mr. W.C. Cuff, chairman of the Everton Football Club, who has been connected with the club as director secretary and chairman for thirty-eight years, gave his ideas on the subject, and they are doubly interesting in view of the fact that the signing of famous players at the end of last season has certainly had a great deal of bearing on the present position.
“It is silly to say that we have won through the lapses of others,” said Mr. Cuff. ”Can you tell me of any championship or cup of which that could not be said in some degree or a other? The truth is that we got the right men at the right time. In the early months of last year, we remedied the weaknesses in the team, and we were perfectly satisfied with our deal although the team continued to struggle, and all the players were unable to reveal their real form owing to their anxiety to escape the bogey of relegation.”
“At the last annual meeting of the directors and shareholders, I told them that we had a much better team than the results seemed to imply and when they were free from strain of fighting to keep in the first division of the league. I was perfectly certain they would do themselves justice and vindicate the confidence we had in them. They have justified that statement absolutely. The team spirit has been wonderful but, of course, one of the chief factors of the success we have attained has been our ability to play the team practically unchanged. This is verified when one remembers that we slipped from the top place just after Christmas. When we were forced to make changes through injuries. When the team settled down again, we resumed our winning career and the players have done everything expected of them. Indeed they have been magnificent.”
“It is difficult to start eulogising ourselves and I don’t want to do it. But there is no doubt that this has been one of the most exciting contests in the whole forty years of the league’s existence, and the fact that there is very little difference in standard between the top and the bottom club makes Everton’s performance all the more meritorious. Next year is our jubilee year as the Everton club, although it is not generally known that this year is really our jubilee as a football club, for we began as St Domingo FC in 1878 and the following year changed our name to Everton football club, we celebrate the jubilee next year and it is a great satisfaction to us to enter that milestone in our history as champions.”
“Would we like the cup as a jubilee gift? Well, that goes without saying, and we’ll leave it at that. In conclusion, I would like to say that the directors have worked as one man and the whole staff and players and directors have carried through the season in perfect harmony a factor which in itself has had a great bearing on our ultimate success.”
“Champions” – The Liverpool Post and Mercury, 4th May 1928
Everton became champions. Their work, as a team, was done. All that was left now was for Dixie Dean to break George Camsell’s record to cap off an incredible season. It goes without question that Everton would not have won the league without Dixie Dean, especially since he contributed to more than half of their goals.
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