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Forty years ago today, March 1, 1980, was the day the music died.

William Ralph Dean, AKA Dixie - the greatest goalscorer in the history of English football - took his last breath on this earth.

And appropriately he drew that breath at Goodison Park, watching his beloved Everton Football Club play their fiercest rivals, having earlier in the day had a stirring eulogy delivered by Liverpool's greatest ever manager - a tribute which ultimately became his obituary.

His daughter Barbara, who drove her dad to his last match, says: "I think he stage managed the whole thing."

Maybe. Because everything about March 1, 1980 was unusual.

Everton were playing Liverpool in the 136th Merseyside derby and while Dixie had played in 17 of these tribal conflicts and had scored 19 times in them, he had never visited one as a spectator.

Not one - until that fateful Saturday afternoon.

But on March 1, 1980, Dixie agreed to attend a launch of that year's Everton and Liverpool club annuals at the now demolished Holiday Inn on Paradise Street, enjoy a lunch with his good friend Bill Shankly - and then go on to the match.

In preparation his daughter Barbara, who lived with and cared for her dad, had polished the one shoe he then wore, after having his leg amputated in 1976.

"I got him all spruced up, polished his one shoe and drove him to the hotel. But as we got him into his wheelchair I noticed he still had his slipper on!" she recalled.

"He said not to worry, but it had drops of tea and bits of biscuit on it and I always liked him to look his best. So I ran to the toilet and wiped it with some tissue. It was a leather slipper and he probably felt more comfortable in it.

"I was due to start work at Clatterbridge, where I was nursing, and as I left he shouted me, I turned around and he said 'Don't worry about me, I'm going to be alright.'

"Then he gave me a thumbs up.

"He didn't usually do that. I think he knew."

But that was only the start of the day's unusual events.

If Dixie knew, Bill Shankly, who passed away himself the following year, certainly didn't.

Yet he delivered the most eloquent and moving eulogy to his pal sat alongside him during that Holiday Inn lunch.

He got to his feet and in that resonant brogue declared: "We have in our midst today, ladies and gentlemen, a man who was the greatest at what he did. You can't say that about many people in history, whatever branch of life you're talking about. But you can say that about Dixie Dean.

"Oh yes. His record of goalscoring is the most amazing thing under the sun. Nobody will ever come near to equalling his fantastic feat of scoring 60 League goals in a season.

"I played against him a few times when I was with Preston. He was a big, cocky, confident man, arrogant in his approach to the game. That is the hallmark of a great player and Dixie was the greatest centre-forward there will ever be.

"Nobody who's ever been born could head a ball into the net like him. When he connected it frightened people. You couldn't stop him scoring. He belongs in the company of the supremely great ... like Beethoven, Shakespeare and Rembrandt."

John Keith, the former Daily Express journalist who penned a Dixie Dean biography and who had invited him to that Moat House book launch, recalled: "As Shankly was spellbinding his audience, a tear fell down Dixie's cheek. It was a moving, cameo moment which, for me, remains frozen in time."

Dixie Dean, the footballing-warrior never booked nor sent-off and who once lost a testicle in a match without demur, shedding a tear?

It truly was a strange day.

Then there was Doctor Ian Irving, Everton's respected long-serving physician who retired in June 2017 after almost 40 years stirling service, who was on matchday duty for the first time at Goodison Park.

One of his first duties in a long and storied career with the Blues was to attend to the club's greatest ever player after he had taken ill in the Main Stand towards the end of the match.

Dr Irving recalled that he tended to the stricken star after he had been taken into the club's boardroom, but that nothing could be done.

And he was bitterly upset that that some members of the media had become aware of what had happened. He desperately wanted to protect the family from discovering the dreadful news second hand.

Dixie's beloved grand-daughter Melanie, Barbara's daughter who had lived with her granddad all of her life, was a 13-year-old watching the match from the Gwladys Street End with family friends.

She was aware that something had happened, because she could see her granddad being taken into the Main Stand before the match had finished, but didn't know what.

She was driven back to the friends' house in Claughton Village and while she was aware of a subdued atmosphere in the house - and the knowledge that something strange had happened because she was served her tea there - she was spared the fate of discovering the sad news over the airwaves.

Barbara was not so fortunate.

On duty at Clatterbridge Hospital, Everton's club chairman Bill Scott had immediately set off in his plush car to deliver the sad news in person. But as he arrived at the hospital the news was already being broadcast on the television.

"It was a terrible shock," recalled Barbara, "but Mr Scott couldn't have done more. He drove me to pick up Melanie, then he drove us home. And because my car was still at Clatterbridge he arranged for us to be taken back there on the Sunday to collect it.

"Then on Monday I had to go to the mortuary at Walton Hospital to identify my dad."

So William Ralph Dean, the footballer who illuminated Goodison Park so many times during his stellar playing career, saw his life's light extinguished there.

And he has remained there ever since.

Following his funeral service on Friday March 7, at St James' Church in Birkenhead, the church where he had been baptised and married, Barbara insisted on scattering his ashes along the halfway line at Goodison Park.

The very next day, in an uplifting epitaph, Everton won a famous FA Cup quarter-final there.

The derby match at which Dixie had died was a grim ugly affair, a game which saw Everton defender Geoff Nulty's career ended by a crude tackle.

But seven days later, against a wonderfully gifted and attractive Ipswich Town team which had won 4-0 at Goodison Park just a month earlier, Everton triumphed. They won with a goal from their then celebrated centre-forward Bob Latchford, a proud Dixie successor, and another man who had worn the number nine shirt for the Blues, Brian Kidd.

Several years later Liverpool songwriter Gerry Murphy penned the moving Ballad of Dixie Dean.

It's a stirring, evocative anthem and opens with the words: "On the banks of the River Mersey, it is morning in the street. There's a boy in a football jersey ... playing music with his feet."

Dean created an orchestral symphony with those feet - and that anointed head - creating a goalscoring record which still stands 92 years after it was set, and which will surely never be broken.

Dixie Dean scored 60 goals in a single league season, scored 383 goals in an incredible Everton career, scored 18 goals in 16 England appearances - and made supporters' spirits sing everywhere he played.

And if 40 years ago today, March 1st, 1980, was the day that music died, that night's Match of the Day, for the first time in the programme's history, also silenced its famous theme tune at the end of the show.

A black and white image of the great man filled the screen instead - accompanied by a powerful, poignant silence.

It really was the day the music died.