Derek William Temple was born on the 13th of November 1938 in Dovecot, Liverpool and lived a couple of streets away from his future wife Maureen who recalls, " I went to Dovecot Secondary Modern and Derek went to the same school as me, he lived a couple of roads away and we were practically neighbours. I didn't know him at school because he's three years older but I met him through my sister, Pat. He was part of her group of friends and I do remember him from being quite young because one day when I was walking home from school there was an ambulance dropping a boy off at his house who'd broken a wrist playing football. It stuck in my mind because to see an ambulance was a rare occurrence in those days, but it was only years later that I found out it was him. The only thing I knew about football was that my brother played at school. In fact when I met Derek, I don't think I even knew he was a footballer. I was the little sister in a big group and I didn’t ask those kinds of questions. I knew he went to work but that was all. He played for Everton Reserves when I really became aware of it. He'd worked his way up through the Liverpool Schoolboys, the Everton Youth, England Schoolboys and England Youth."
Derek made his first-team debut at centre forward on the 30th of March 1957 but moved to inside forward later that year to link up well with Dave Hickson. However the partnership was broken up when Derek was called up for his National Service with some of it in Kenya. On his return and reacclimatisng to English football, blessed with pace and excellent ball-striking technique, he evolved into a wide striker with Harry Catterick moving him to the left wing in 1961 and he scored 10 goals in 17 games. He would have made more than five appearances in the championship-winning 1962/63 campaign, were it not for a serious knee injury which required a cartilage operation. However he did recover in time to play in the 1963 FA Charity Shield. He remained a mainstay in the side throughout the 1960s, keeping John Morrissey out of the side and was rewarded with an England call-up in 1965. In spite of setting up the winning goal against West Germany, Derek was not selected again.
He cemented his place in football folklore when he arrowed a low shot past Ron Springett on the 14th of May 1966 in one of the most memorable FA Cup finals of the world's greatest domestic knockout competition. Trailing 2-0 Derek set up Trebilcock to score and the same player equalised four minutes later, then it was 'game on'. Derek recalls, "I was seeing a bit of the ball – working hard and trying to get openings. I was up against a good, quick, strong, player in Wilf Smith but I wandered to the inside-right position and he didn’t follow me across. Colin Harvey hit a long ball and Gerry Young mis-trapped it. I was just running towards him in case the ball bobbled off his leg – you do it so many times in a game and maybe it comes off once in twenty times. Gerry was the last man as he was playing sweeper, so I was away. I had time to weigh up all the options; I looked up and saw Springett was on the edge of the six-yard box. He was a good goalie but he could not cover every spot. The ball came up just right at the edge of the box and I just picked the right corner. Bang! I hit it and it flew in. Then I could breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the centre circle."
However, his time at Everton was drawing to a close, and the following year he was transferred to Preston North End for a £35,000 fee, months after Howard Kendall’s move in the opposite direction. By then, he had made 275 appearances, scoring 83 goals, and after making 76 appearances for Preston, he went on to end his career at Wigan Athletic when he signed for £4,000 in the summer of 1970 and made 40 Northern Premier League appearances for the club before deciding to retire in 1971.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2026/08/merseyside-for-sport-gerry-byrne.html
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