Source: Liverpool_Echo
Merseyside hardmen: Record-breaking Everton FC goalscorer Dixie Dean cheated death
Dixie Dean of Everton shoots for goal at Goodison Park[LNB]NEVER booked, never sent-off, Dixie Dean was regarded as one of football's gentlemen. But equally there is no doubt that Everton's legendary centre-forward belongs in the pantheon of Mersey hard men.[LNB]To play your football in an era when strikers were routinely assaulted - Dean famously lost a testicle early in his career - and not retaliate takes enormous disicpline and character.[LNB]But that setback was a trifle compared to the enormous obstacle Dean overcame as a 19-year-old.[LNB]Quite simply, Dean battled back from death's door.[LNB]Even the most ill-informed football fan knows that Bill 'Dixie' Dean scored a record breaking 60 league goals in the 1927/28 season.[LNB]But fewer are aware that just 12 months before the start of that remarkable campaign Dean nearly died.[LNB]The youngster suffered appalling injuries in a motocycle accident in North Wales with a girlfriend and Thomas Keates' Jubilee History of Everton Football Club recorded: 'Doctors were afraid he could not live for many hours.[LNB]'His survival astonished them. When recovery was assured the medical pronouncement was 'This man will never be able to play football again.'[LNB]'Play again he did, to such startling affect that romantic tales began to surround his spell in hospital.'
