There have been few occasions in the history of Everton where an opposition goal has been applauded so raucously.  With Everton cruising 3-0, 18 minutes from the end of the encounter with Newcastle United on the final day of the 2011/12 season a mix up between Tim Howard and Tony Hibbert saw the veteran right back guide the ball past his own goalkeeper with a goalpoacher’s precision. 

More than ten years and 300 appearances into his Everton career Hibbert had finally scored, albeit into his own net.  This didn’t matter for the near capacity crowd, who delighted in his faux pas as if he had finished at the correct end.  ‘He scores when he wants, he scores when he wants, Oh Tony Hibbert, he scores when he wants’ a near capacity crowd sang to the ashen faced defender.

No outfield player in the club’s history has gone longer without scoring a goal than Hibbert and his quest to find the back of the net has afforded the modest home grown player unlikely cult status. The irony was that just a month earlier Hibbert had nearly broken his duck when a cross from the right flank struck the Norwich City crossbar.

A boyhood Evertonian, Hibbert emerged through the club’s youth ranks and with Leon Osman and Francis Jeffers was part of the FA Youth Cup winning side of 1998.  He made his debut in a 2-0 victory over West Ham in March 2001, but it was the arrival of David Moyes a year later that saw him become a regular.

Quick, solid, dependable, hard, reliable these were the key ingredients that made him a regular on the right side of the Everton defence. Naturally modest, he eschewed the limelight foisted upon modern footballers, kept his head down and did a fine job.  Although his distribution was sometimes the cause for complaint, he worked on this and it improved considerably with time. 

Sometimes he was guilty of rash challenges and the proverbial rush of blood to the head, but Hibbert never gave anything but his all and never let anyone down.  Called into action as an auxiliary centre half at times of injury crisis he adapted with complaint and did his best. Never was he better than in Everton’s memorable 1-0 victory over eventual champions Manchester City at Goodison in January 2012.  Called into the unfamiliar centre back role he was a magnificent, stubborn, cloying presence all night, giving David Moyes his 150^th league victory.

‘Arguably it might have been the best,’ said Moyes aftewards. ‘The team we had, the players missing, we had to defend for long times but it was a great effort. That's as good as it has been at Everton for a long time.’ Pointing to the input of the makeshift centre half, the Guardian’s chief football writer, Daniel Taylor, added ‘Their performance was epitomised by the way Tony Hibbert, a right-back by trade, handled his move to centre-half.’

Cult status came with time and a memorable banner at the 2009 FA Cup Final promised ‘Hibbert scores, we riot’. The jovial nature of this relationship belies the deep respect that the club and its supporters have for the player. In 2012 Hibbert was awarded a testimonial match against AEK Athens, a game in which – unbelievably – he did score.  There was no riot, but the occasion was marked with a pitch invasion

Moyes has described Hibbert as ‘part of the Everton brickwork’ and said that he had a job for life at the club. ‘Overall he's been great; consistent [and] reliable. I've always said he's part of the furniture here. He's tenacious, tough, committed and, probably the most important thing, I can rely on him,’ he said then. ‘That's why he's been here so long and as long as I'm here, he'll be here.’

The emergence of Seamus Coleman, however, began to limit Hibbert’s appearances in the first team. He remained part of the Goodison dressing room under Moyes’s successor, Roberto Martinez, but his appearances became fewer and fewer. By the time of the 2013/14 season Coleman was Everton’s player of the season, while Hibbert was limited to just a single substitute appearance in the league. A substitute appearance against Bournemouth in April 2016 marked the end to a rare one-club career of unfussy dedication to the royal blue cause.