Joseph Royle (born 8 April 1949) is an English football manager and former footballer. In his playing career as a striker, he debuted for Everton at the age of 16 and went on to play for Manchester City, Bristol City, Norwich City, and the England national team. Later, he managed Oldham Athletic, Everton, Manchester City, and Ipswich Town. He is currently a director at Oldham Athletic. 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 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, but it was his hometown club 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 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 and 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 League Cup in 1976. He left Maine Road in November 1977 to join Bristol City and had a further stint with 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 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 the reds. International career Royle was awarded the first of his six England caps against Malta in 1971. Managerial career Oldham Athletic In June 1982, Royle moved into management in the Second Division at Oldham Athletic. He spent more than 12 years in charge at Boundary Park, taking them into the First Division in 1991 (a year before it