On 5th May 1928, Dixie Dean scored a hat-trick against Arsenal on the final day of the 1927/28 season. The last of those goals was Dixie’s 60th league goal of the season – a record in English football, beating George Camsell’s record of 59 in a season. No player has come close since and it is extremely likely that this tally will never be beaten. However, Dixie came really close to not playing in the game at all. In the previous game against Burnley, he picked up a thigh injury. The record was in sight but the injury made Dixie’s hopes of breaking it fade away. But then along came Harry Cooke.

In an interview with Liverpool Echo journalist Michael Charters in May 1971, Dixie thanked long-time trainer at the club Harry Cooke for making the 60-goal season possible. Cooke was determined to make him fit for the Arsenal game and beat it.

You see, if it hadn’t been for old Harry Cooke, I wouldn’t have played against Arsenal at all. Harry was the trainer at Everton in all my years there, and he was a great character. His birthday was the same day as mine, on January 22nd, and he was like a father to me.

The position was this: George Camsell, the Middlesbrough centre-forward, had set the League scoring record at 59 the season before, but that was in the Second Division. With two games to go, I had scored 53 goals in 37 League games, so I wanted seven goals from the last two matches to beat George’s record.

The first of these two games was at Burnley on the Wednesday of the last week of the season. I got four that day, all before half-time, and I was particularly pleased because I was playing against big Jack Hill, the England centre-half in those days, and a particular pal of mine. He was reckoned the best in the business then, but any rate, I got four against big Jack and he rubbed his faced on the ground when the fourth one went in. I didn’t do anything in the second half because I pulled a thigh muscle badly, and I was in some pain. Old Harry Cooke was shaking when he found out about it – and so was I.

Harry was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to play against Arsenal. So when we got back from Burnley that night, he came with me to my home in Alderley Avenue, Birkenhead. He wanted to put hot plasters on my leg to get the muscle right. You’re supposed to put these plasters on pretty hot and leave them for about ten to twelve hours, but Harry wasn’t content with that. He wanted to change them every two hours so that the heat from the plasters would really work. So I went to bed and he sat in a chair in my bedroom and woke me up every two hours so that he could put a fresh plaster on. He did this for three nights on the run – the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights before the Arsenal game.

Without him, I’d never have played that day and never broken the record.

What we used to do was that in the morning, I’d run him to his home in Wallasey before we went over to Goodison for more treatment. I don’t know how he stuck it for three nights on end without much sleep, but he told me he used to try and get a few hours sleep each afternoon before he came back to my home in Birkenhead to start putting on the plasters all over again.

He was a wonderful man – all the lads at Everton would do anything for him, and he was a wonderful man to me.

For decades, Everton fans have been adulating Dixie for breaking the record, but there has been little mention of Harry Cooke. He was Everton through and through and his key contribution to Dixie’s record should be talked about more often.