Date: Friday, 13th February 2015

Venue: Holiday Inn, central Belfast

Guestlist:

Chris McGimpsey (the ESCNI Chairman) opened the evening by welcoming everyone to Everton FC's Visit to ESCNI at the Holiday Inn, Belfast.

The room was suitably bedecked in blue and white and there was even a free brochure produced for the evening (downloadable at the bottom of this webpage).

The event, itself, was compered by Everton's Darren Griffiths, and he was as professional as ever.

Darren began the evening with a short chat with Brian Doogan (Everton's new Head of Media) who, incidentally, is a native of Lisnaskea.

This chat focused primarily on the importance of the stadium development.

After that, Darren turned to the two Everton Ambassadors (Graham Stuart and Ronny Goodlass) and for the remainder of the first half, various discussions took place.

The subjects included an inquest into the recent Chelsea away match, the standard of refereeing (including unrepeatable references to Pierluiga Collina and Clive Thomas!), the current team's overall performances, the Europa League and Aaron Lennon.

At half time, everyone adjourned to the foyer to enjoy some much appreciated sandwiches and tea/coffee with tray bakes; all kindly supplied by ESCNI.

The second half was a Q&A session with various members asking questions.

The subjects included such topics as stadium development, Romelu Lukaku’s current form, ticket prices, the club’s ethos, the Kitbag deal (and its problems), club finances, the Robles/Howard dilemma, modern fooball (is it a sport or a business?), team rotation policy, value of radio commentaries, football pundits and Samuel Eto’o.

The event closed with a prize draw (won by Martin Hughes) for a signed shirt provided by Everton; and the Everton guests were presented with various souvenirs of their visit to Belfast by the ESCNI Chairman.

Everton's Christine Prior was on hand to distribute various Everton gifts to those present, and the event was filmed for Everton TV (by Ryan Dickinson).

Afterwards, the Everton guests stayed on to chat, provide autographs and to have their pictures taken with those ESCNI members in attendance.

We hope everyone enjoyed the evening, and felt that it was worthwhile to attend. 

There were around 50 ESCNI members in attendance; perhaps a lower number than we would have liked, but the event was organised at rather short notice. 

(16 Feb)