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Everton reported back to pre-season training today – just six days before they fly out for a two-match tour of Singapore.

Every facet of the trip out east has been organised down to the finest detail – flights, transfers, hotels, training sessions, PR events - even what the players will be eating and when.

Which is in stark contrast to one of the first tours I had the good fortune to enjoy as the Echo’s Everton correspondent.

It’s 21 years ago now - but the memories are still vivid.

After all, it was one of my first tours with the Toffees. And it was like no other I’d experienced – before or since.

Some of the details have been reported in the Echo before, but it bears retelling.

Evertonians may recall the 1994-95 campaign for the abject start Mike Walker’s side made to the season, the worst opening sequence of results in the club’s history.

Those hardy souls who made the pre-season journeys to Sweden, Germany and Italy will perhaps understand why.

I’d only enjoyed one pre-season tour prior to 1994, an engaging 13 day tour of Switzerland and Germany in the company of contrasting characters like Howard Kendall, Maurice Johnston, Mark Ward and Neville Southall.

If that was eye-opening, it was nothing compared to the following summer’s preparations under a new management team of Mike Walker and Dave Williams.

Tony Cottee’s engaging 1995 autobiography Claret and Blues offered a little insight.

“Mike Walker was a firm believer in the continental approach to football, but I still couldn’t understand why Everton arranged THREE pre-season tours abroad that summer,” he wrote.

“We spent nine days in Germany, seven in Sweden and three in Italy – doing the wrong things, eating the wrong things and drinking the wrong things. It seems crazy to me.”

All true. But for a wide-eyed young hack great fun.

Everton kicked off their preparations with a short flight to Copenhagen – a lively experience in itself with notoriously bad-flier Paul Rideout mercilessly taunted and ribbed by his team-mates at every hint of gentle turbulence - then enjoyed a picturesque catamaran crossing to Helsingborg.

Well, most of the party did.

A couple of notable absentees became apparent when the team checked into the hotel.

“Right lads,” barked manager Mike Walker.

“On the training ground in 10 minutes for a loosener. Jimmy, Les, get the kit ready. Jimmy? Les? Where the hell are Jim . . . .”

The realisation dawned that poor old Jimmy and Les had been left to unload the kit skips unaided at Helsingborg – and left behind.

Red-faced Les, a physio never afraid of injuring a player’s pride – or his manager’s - stormed into reception 45 minutes later to snarl: “There’s a taxi outside. I’m not paying.”

The manager paid for it, literally and metaphorically as the week wore on.

That was a foretaste of things to come.

Ian Snodin injured his ankle on the first day of training and begged to be sent home.

“No chance,” said Walker. “You’re staying here for team spirit.”

“But I’ll only get bored boss and be a nuisance,” complained Snods.

“You’re staying Snods, that’s the end of it.”

Walker surely regretted the decision when Snodin’s ideas of injecting a little life into the tour became quickly apparent.

Late night drinking sessions, pizza deliveries, midnight dips in the hotel swimming pool . . . Snodin did indeed become a nuisance to stoic room-mate Brett Angell.

Manager Walker, however, was blissfully unaware.

Sweden was in the grip of a heatwave, which was bad news for footballers training, but great news for their new manager who loved nothing better than soaking up the sun in high cut orange swimming trunks.

And soak up the sun he did. During morning press conferences on his hotel room balcony (I had to sit with my back to the sun so he could catch the full rays on his face), at the poolside after training and in the evening on the hotel patio.

Goalkeeper Neville Southall, not a man to ever concern himself with the benefits of a tan, almost caught an unexpected bronzey in the most unusual of places.

Before a clash with a team of Swedish lower league minnows Southall, irritated that his strip wasn’t ready in time for his lengthy warm-up, threatened to walk out as he was if a kit didn’t materialise instantly.

It didn’t – and Southall was always a man of his word.

Cue a hugely decorated Welsh international goalkeeper striding out in front of startled Swedish spectators wearing nothing more than boots and shin pads, a pleading kit-man chasing behind.

Southall himself was left behind when the players convinced the management team that a trip to a local nightclub was a good idea for team morale – Big Nev didn’t do partying or alcohol.

The rest of the squad did, though, spectacularly.

The team bus returned to the hotel several hours later minus a back window and 70 per cent of the party who set out.

They all returned from various Swedish outposts . . . eventually.

My stop-off point en route back to the hotel involved a house party, Ian Snodin and assistant-manager Dave Williams.

The image of him practicing imaginary drunken golf swings in a back garden as the sun rose on another glorious Swedish day will stay with me forever.

So will the memories of that tour, if not the campaign it prefaced.

But Sweden was only the start.

Soon after returning from Scandinavia the Toffees were off on their travels again - this time to Germany.

The team hotel was a small, sleepy town called Wiefelstede – alongside a huge cornfield which might or might not have been responsible for the enormous amount of houseflies which infested every room.

A striker by trade, Tony Cottee spent most of his downtime with a fly swatter at the ready, assassinating insects and piling up mini-mountains of dead bugs.

But flies weren’t the biggest complaint amongst the players.

A friendly match had been arranged against St Pauli in Hamburg – a four hour coach journey away – which meant no opportunity for a pre-match meal.

The motorway service station which the team bus idled outside for half an hour en route didn’t have the kind of refuelling required for top flight footballers – which meant that on only my second pre-season tour I was given an unusual pre-match task.

I was asked to surreptitiously ferry huge bratwurst sausages from a pitch side stall to a couple of decorated international footballers, without the manager’s knowledge, of course.

Everton won 2-1.

“It’s Dog and Duck United on tour,” Neville Southall and Andy Hinchcliffe memorably quipped.

But if that tour was unusual, it was nothing compared to the Italian job which followed.

The Blues flew to Aosta – a frontier town in Northern Italy – for a three team tournament with a difference.

Torino and Lazio were the opposition – and the difference was that the matches lasted just 45 minutes.

That was fine for the sides playing back to back matches, but one unfortunate team had to sit out for the best part of an hour while the other teams slugged it out.

Predictably that was Everton.

The Blues comfortably disposed of Torino 2-0 – than had to watch while Lazio and Torino fought it out, before dragging their rapidly stiffening limbs out to face the light blues.

They lost 4-0.

As if to make up for the lack of organisation of the tournament, the organisers tried to make up by organising a night out for the management ... and press.

Which is how I ended up in a car being driven around the twisting, winding roads of Northern Italy alongside Mike Walker and his assistant, Dave Williams, to an outdoor disco.

The management duo were livelier than their players had been just a couple of hours earlier.

Sadly that animation didn’t transfer onto the football pitch when the season kicked off. Everton made an appalling start to the season, Mike Walker was relieved of his duties – and Joe Royle arrived to replace him.

Pre-season tours became less colourful, but more successful.

So if travelling fans today complain about pre-season tours being over-organised and perhaps just a tinsy-bit dull, don’t knock them.

They could herald a flying start to a new football season!