JOEY JONES didn't lose one of the six Merseyside derbies he played for Liverpool against Everton - but he paid a price for boasting about his proud record.

The Liverpool legend talked about his derby dominance in the build-up to Wrexham's FA Cup fifth round trip to Goodison Park where the Reds suffered a 5-2 spanking in 1980.

"I may have never lost for Liverpool but I did with Wrexham and the Everton fans reminded of that from start to finish when we lost there in the Eighties," said Jones, was in the Liverpool team that ended Everton's FA Cup dream in 1977 when Jimmy Case, Phil Neal and Ray Kennedy scored in a 3-0 semi-final replay win at Manchester City's old Maine Road ground.

"Everton should have won the first game. It ended 2-2 but Bryan Hamilton had a goal disallowed and I think replays showed it should have stood."

Despite lifting the First Division title and the European Cup where Jones became the first Welshman to pick up a winners' medal in the illustrious competition, Bob Paisley's Reds missed out on the treble when Manchester United beat then 2-1 in the Wembley FA Cup Final.

Jones, a tough-tackling full back who became a cult hero wherever he played, took consolation from the fact that he set up Case's goal.

"It was a raking 40 yard pass to Jimmy for the goal but I was trying to find Kevin Keegan instead!" joked Jones, who made 72 appearance and scored three goals for Liverpool during his three-year stay at Anfield.

They were days Jones, now 64, will never forget - and neither will the Liverpool supporters, who unfurled the famous banner that read: 'Joey Ate The Frogs Legs, Made The Swiss Roll, Now He's Munching Gladbach.'

"When you're young you dream of playing football for your favourite club," said Jones. "Mine was Liverpool so to end up playing for them, have your name chanted by the fans, listening to You'll Never Walk Alone...it was a dream come true.

"Wrexham will always be my spiritual home but Anfield was something else.

"I used to watch them from the Boy's Pen and then the Kop and here I was playing for them alongside great likes Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes."

Jones tells a great story of when he and his late father first saw Hughes in action.

"Some of my family were Everton fans and my dad took me to Everton v Blackpool in 1966," said Jones. "I think Blackpool won and I remember my dad saying that Emlyn Hughes was good. Liverpool should go and sign him.

"A few weeks later, back home on the council estate in Llandudno, we had a shop that had started selling the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News and my dad made me go and pick up an Echo and one day, there was the headline on the back: Emlyn Hughes signs for Liverpool."

Jones' other memory of Everton was, not with Liverpool, but with Chelsea in a top-flight league game at Goodison Park three says before Christmas in 1984.

"I was back at Goodison and we were 3-0 down in the first half. As you can imagine I was getting pelted from all sides of the ground," recalled Jones.

"We pulled one goal back and I ran to the Gwladys Street ended with one finger in the air - not the rude sign but just to left them know we'd scored.

"Then we scored again. And I ran back gave the Everton fans two fingers - the Winston Churchill sign, nothing else.

"Then it was 3-3 and then four and I repeated the act both times. They were going absolutely berserk.

"But then I remembered by car was in the car park - because Mickey Thomas and me always drove to games - and that some fans would be waiting for me.

"Thankfull some of my family wee at the game so they were waiting by my car to make sure I was fine."

The scorer of three of the goal in Chelsea's great fightback was Welsh international Gordon Davies, who went on to create FA Cup history alongside player-coach Jones and Mickey Thomas in Wrexham's never-to-be-forgotten 2-1 third round win over Arsenal in 1992.