Waggy's VIP Trips

Dave Wagstaffe was among the VIPs at not one but two functions surrounding Manchester City’s hosting of this summer’s UEFA Cup final. In the weeks before Zenit St Petersburg beat Rangers at the City of Manchester Stadium, Waggy, who was born half a mile from Eastlands, was joined by the likes of Denis Law, Peter Reid, Joe Corrigan and Phil Neal at a Town Hall buffet, at which the chief guest of honour was UEFA chairman Michel Platini.

A Wanderer Returns

I felt like I'd been waiting ten years to track down Hugh McIlmoyle, so it hardly seemed to matter that I was ten minutes late pulling on to his drive in a village that might have been called Middle Of Nowhere. But this legend of Cumbrian football greeted me by saying he had been asked by Border TV to do a live interview into that teatime's news programme from outside Carlisle United's Brunton Park ground. Bang goes another ten minutes.

Roberts Rules Out Retirement

Darren Roberts aims to show there’s yet more life in the old legs after scoring a second notable Wolves hat-trick, almost 16 years on from his first! The striker made big headlines in September, 1992, when he hit three goals in the first half of his full League debut for Wanderers – the stunning 4-0 victory at Birmingham in front of the live TV cameras.

An Eye-Opening Trend

Much has been said, with Paul Ince’s return to the Premier League, about how many of Sir Alex Ferguson’s former Manchester United stalwarts have followed him into management. Steve Bruce, Roy Keane and Mark Hughes already occupied top-flight hot seats while, from the Aberdeen side he led during his pre-knighthood days to the greatest era in their history, Gordon Strachan, Alex McLeish and Mark McGhee have embarked on similar journeys.

A Scoring Spree In The Sun

It was a trip too many for Graham Taylor, who didn’t really want to be there at all. By the time he was appointed by Wolves in the spring of 1994, the recently deposed national manager was done with airports and language barriers, and was going through a phase of believing that the best journeys were those he could make without the need for his passport.

Dean Justifies His ‘Crime’

Almost 20 years on, Dean Edwards is still ribbed by mates over the part he played in denying his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers a second successive trip to Wembley in the Sherpa Van Trophy.

Michael Mixes It At The Mic

Michael Gilkes, who lined up as a left-winger or left-back during his two years at Wolves in the late 1990s, is showing similar versatility in his post-playing career. The 43-year-old Londoner now works for the sports team at Reading 107FM and attends all games played by a club for whom he made 393 appearances before moving to Molineux on deadline day in 1997.

A Terrific Read

Some players can score 150 goals in a career and struggle a couple of decades later to recall more than half a dozen of them. Fortunately for readers of Waggy’s Tales, Dave Wagstaffe (who stresses that he netted considerably fewer than that sort of figure!) has excellent power of recall, even for small detail.

Onwards And Upwards

Having recently caught up for the first time with Joe Wilson in Australia and had four meetings with French-based Freddie Goodwin, we at Wolves Heroes are refusing to rest on our laurels. We have also got an interview in the book with another player who had proved elusive for many years and will be using that in the next week or so.