Editing Joe Royle (section)

==Playing career==
===Club career===
Royle was born in the [[Norris Green]] area of [[Liverpool]] on 8 April 1949. He attended Ranworth Square Primary School in Norris Green and [[Quarry Bank High School]] in Liverpool's [[Allerton, Liverpool|Allerton]] suburb, where he was an all-round sportsman. Unusually for a grammar schoolboy, he played for the Liverpool schoolboys team, which was usually drawn from secondary modern schools.

A number of clubs were interested in signing Royle, including [[Manchester United F.C.|Manchester United]], but it was his hometown club [[Everton F.C.|Everton]] that succeeded in recruiting him to their ranks. He went on to make 270 appearances for Everton, scoring 119 times. He made his debut at the age of 16 and held the record of being the youngest player to play for Everton until [[James Vaughan (striker)|James Vaughan]] beat the record on 10 April 2005 by 11 days. For five seasons he was Everton's top scorer, notably scoring 23 goals in the Championship-winning side of [[1969–70 in English football|1969–70]]. [[Manchester City F.C.|Manchester City]] manager [[Tony Book]] bought Royle for £170,000 in 1974 and he went on to claim further honours as he helped them to win the [[Football League Cup|League Cup]] in 1976.

He left [[Maine Road]] in November 1977 to join [[Bristol City F.C.|Bristol City]] and had a further stint with [[Norwich City F.C.|Norwich City]], including winning [[Norwich City player of the year]] in 1981, before being forced to retire from the game in 1982 (aged 33) due to a knee injury. In 2002, he was voted into the club's [[Norwich City F.C. Hall of Fame|hall of fame]] by Norwich supporters. His time at Bristol City, however, had not been so fruitful. After a storming on-loan debut, scoring four, he only tallied another 14 goals in the remaining 100 games with them.

===International career===
Royle was awarded the first of his six England caps against [[Malta national football team|Malta]] in 1971.