A wind of change was sweeping through Britain in 1960. The prim austerity of the 1950s was slowly but inexorably being engulfed by the outset of the ‘swinging sixties’ and 1960 was the year that Penguin Books were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act after their publication of the D H Lawrence classic ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’

Representing the Crown, Mervyn Griffith Jones QC asked the jury with a magnificent exposition of pomposity: “Is this the kind of book you would wish your wife or servants to read?”

Society was ready to move on; so was football. The year 1960 marked the beginning of the end for censorship and it coincided with the last tango for Wolves as the dominant force in the English game.

Our lust for silverware had been insatiable but the passion was about to dampen, although it’s hard to imagine that any pre-season at Molineux could have been sprinkled with greater anticipation than the one in 1959.

The prospect of a third consecutive League championship and a second tilt at the European Cup signified that the club’s aspirations could not be set any higher.

Ultimately, however, both these challenges were destined to end in bitter disappointment. The championship eluded Wolves by the slenderest of margins while Barcelona handed out a monumental thrashing that put paid to any notion that Wolves would rule Europe in the aftermath of the fabulous floodlit friendly games with which they pioneered the inception of what is today’s Champions League.

Consolation didn’t come any bigger than winning the FA Cup. Indeed, when Pathe News filmed the event, their commentary said that the kick-off at Wembley marked the start of the match for ‘the most highly prized trophy in the world of sport.’

The luck of the draw certainly did not favour Wolves in the third round. A trip to Newcastle - three-times winners of the trophy in the previous decade – was a daunting prospect.

The Geordies clearly didn’t give much for our chances either. The match programme bluntly expressed the prospects with typical North East swagger: “United are playing with such skill and purpose that it is difficult to see how Wolves or any other team can give them the KO.”

Jimmy Murray is denied in front of the Geordie masses.

In front of a crowd in excess of 62,000, Ron Flowers fired in an equaliser before his wing-half partner Eddie Clamp converted a penalty to put Wolves ahead after a goal-bound shot from Norman Deeley was handled by a Newcastle defender - an infringement that these days renders instant dismissal for the culprit.

A late reply for the Magpies meant that the first fully floodlit cup replay to be played at Molineux would be contested on the following Wednesday. In a cracking match played in arctic conditions, Wolves won 4-2.

Over 40 years later, speaking at his then home in Tettenhall Wood, Eddie Stuart, the Wolves captain in the two games, said that being drawn at Newcastle was such a stiff test that even at such an early stage, he felt Wolves would reach Wembley if they survived it.

Stuart also revealed to me his despair relating to a far more serious matter. By February, he found himself vying with George Showell for the no 2 shirt. Then, on March 21, back in his native South Africa, police opened fire and killed 69 black civil rights demonstrators in Sharpeville near Johannesburg.

A storm of international protest followed and Stuart, a native of Jo’burg, was subjected to disparaging and upsetting comments. He had no truck with apartheid but this hard, no-nonsense defender was and remains a highly emotional individual. “I’m a fusser,” he admitted, conceding that Sharpeville distracted him.

He revealed that he spoke extensively to Stan Cullis about his apprehensions and was appreciative of how supportive the manager was. Showell was the man in possession of the right-back spot and playing superbly and, significantly, the playing season was over for Eddie Stuart after Sharpeville.

Last autumn, Wolves Heroes fixed me up with the chance to meet the other South African in the Wolves team, winger Des Horne. He did not experience the turmoil suffered by his older compatriot. In fact, 1959-60 was the best season of his brief stay at Molineux.

Des Horne....a potent force in Wolves' last FA Cup-winning season.

Horne, who was just short of his 70th birthday when we became acquainted in a city centre coffee shop, scored in the replay against Newcastle and weighed in with another goal in the fourth-round game against Charlton at Molineux.

The match programme paid tribute to former Charlton goalkeeper Sam Bartram, who had recently retired, then 37,000 spectators saw his successor Willie Duff play the game of his life. The Second Division side almost defied Wolves, who scored very late on to shade the tie 2-1.

Reflecting on the Cup run, Eddie Clamp referred to the game being ‘our hardest match - and everyone thought it would be our easiest.’

Clamp was on the score-sheet against Luton in the fifth-round tie at Kenilworth Road. England goalkeeper Ron Baynham allowed ‘Chopper’s’ speculative long-range effort to slip through his fingers in dreadful monsoon-like conditions.

Bobby Mason helped himself to a couple of goals in the 4-1 win, one of which was a superb diving header.

When Wolves then travelled to Filbert Street to play Leicester in the quarter-final, they trailed Tottenham in the First Division by a single point and were on course to become the first club to win the League and Cup double in the 20th century. Ultimately, it would be Spurs themselves who achieved the distinction in the following season.

Keeper Malcolm Finlayson, injured for the Luton tie, was still absent, so Geoff Sidebottom continued in goal. His fellow Yorkshireman Barry Stobart filled in up front with the prolific Jimmy Murray also out of the side.

But an own goal from City full-back Len Chalmers and a strike from Peter Broadbent past the great Gordon Banks saw Wolves into their first semi-final since 1951.

Wolves were hot favourites facing the Second Division leaders, Joe Mercer’s Aston Villa, at The Hawthorns.

With Horne missing, Cullis – famous for his policy of blooding young players - drafted in 20-year-old Gerry Mannion, who had played only three League games.

Villa offered spirited resistance but an early Deeley strike beat keeper Nigel Sims, who had spent the first eight years of his career at Molineux, and proved sufficient to earn Wolves a place in their eighth FA Cup final.

Their Wembley opponents would be Blackburn, who had beaten Sheffield Wednesday in their semi-final courtesy of a couple of goals from a certain Derek Dougan. Back in those days, Doog just couldn’t help himself and posted a transfer request to the Rovers board on the day of the final, spending the next seven years as a nomadic maverick until he found his niche and a glorious climax to his career at Molineux. But Saturday, May 7, 1960, was not to be Doog’s day; this was one for the Wolves.

The Monday before the final brought major disappointment. Burnley’s win at Manchester City thwarted Wolves’ quest for a hat-trick of consecutive League championships, the title going to Turf Moor by a solitary point.

In those heady days, second-place finishes were deemed a failure at Molineux and defeat at Wembley was not an option as far as Cullis was concerned.

Wolves had already beaten Blackburn home and away in League matches that season and Rovers were a lowly 17th in the table.

Tottenham captain Danny Blanchflower, who the following season would achieve that coveted double triumph, summed up the mood when speaking on television on the morning of the final. With typical Irish whimsy, he gave us this take: “Everybody’s tipping Wolverhampton Wanderers to win, so I’m tipping Blackburn Rovers to lose.”

For Cullis, team selection was a straightforward exercise with a couple of exceptions. Following a 5-1 win at Chelsea in the final League game, he retained Stobart, which meant there was no place for the excellent Bobby Mason, who had played in every match on the road to Wembley. The anguish must have been desperately hard for Tipton-born Mason to stomach.

Des Horne, who scored twice at Stamford Bridge, was preferred to Gerry Mannion. Despite some excellent League form from the rookie, it was the South African who got the nod.

Not this time.....Ron Flowers' effort was disallowed but Wolves weren't to be denied their Wembley glory.

The final was played in tropical heat, with many spectators having to be revived after fainting. They saw Wolves in the ascendancy throughout the first half and finally take a deserved lead when Rovers wing-half Mick McGrath deflected a Stobart cross into his own goal.

Two minutes later, the match effectively ended as a contest. Norman Deeley tangled with Blackburn’s full-back Dave Whelan and the current owner of Wigan Athletic left Wembley on a stretcher with a badly broken leg.

Over the years, constant reviewing of the match DVD strongly indicates there was no malice in the winger’s challenge. Indeed, later that year, the FA yearbook reflected that ‘Whelan’s injury was sustained in a harmless-looking tackle with Deeley.’

In his 2009 autobiography, Whelan was highly critical of Deeley and reinforced his claim when speaking on Simon Mayo’s Radio 5 Live show on the BBC. Whelan insisted Deeley had ‘gone over the top’ in response to a couple of hefty challenges by Whelan.

Deeley, who died in 2007, was not here to respond but Horne told us that any suggestion of his colleague deliberately taking out an opponent so ruthlessly was nonsense. Horne revealed too that, early in the game, a couple of Blackburn defenders gave him ‘the verbals’ by threatening him with dire consequences if he tangled with them. Unfazed, he replied that no Rovers player was quick enough to catch him – and was proved right!

Deeley’s two goals and disallowed efforts from Ron Flowers and Jimmy Murray simply emphasised Wolves’ superiority. Captain Bill Slater, voted Footballer of the Year, lifted the trophy to the delight of all from Wolverhampton, but not, it appeared, to many from outside the town.

Certain sections of the national press dubbed the game ‘The Dustbin Final’ – an allusion not only to their perception of the entertainment value on offer but to the fact that a section of disgruntled Blackburn fans threw apple cores and discarded match programmes in the direction of the Wolves players as they completed their lap of honour.

It's Ours! Bill Slater and Blackburn captain Ronnie Clayton are interviewed by David Coleman after Wolves' 3-0 win.

Malcolm Finlayson bristles at the criticism to this day, pointing out that the heat was stifling and debilitating; so energy-sapping that fast, fluent football was virtually impossible. He stresses that at no time, before or after the Whelan injury, was there any likelihood of Wolves not prevailing. The ‘dustbin’ jibes are met with contempt.

A couple of years ago, I spoke at length with Finlayson at his business base in Staffordshire before we went to the garage housing the magnificent collection of classic cars of his that were featured on www.wolvesheroes.com very recently.

With properties in the Midlands and in his native Scotland and a hugely successful business career behind him, clearly Finlayson has much to be proud of. As I was about to leave, though, he said: ”Just one last thing……of everything I’ve ever achieved, nothing compares to playing for the Wolves. Nothing even comes close.”

John Lalley

By John Lalley

The inspirational John Barnwell consoles Willie Carr after Wolves' 1979 FA Cup semi-final KO.

When John Barnwell became Wolves’ manager in 1978, he joined a club facing a relegation battle.

Immediately, though, he turned fortune on its head, kept them in the top division and gave us an unlikely FA Cup semi-final appearance against Arsenal, a club he had served with distinction as a player.

The Gunners easily repelled the Wolves challenge at Villa Park but Barnwell had laid the foundation for the following season - a campaign that ranks as the most successful at Molineux over the last 30 years.

To finish sixth in the First Division represented startling progress but to climax the revival with a Wembley triumph in the League Cup was a remarkable achievement.

Just 11 months before the joy of that cup final, Barnwell had suffered life-threatening injuries in an appalling car crash. Remarkably, against all speculation, he returned to management with his characteristic chirpiness, good humour and optimism.

With his assistant Richie Barker, whose role in this era of brief success should never be underestimated, Barnwell recruited the Liverpool veteran Emlyn Hughes during pre-season and then, in early September, sensationally shattered the British transfer record by paying Villa £1.5m for striker Andy Gray.

The transaction was funded almost in its entirety by Steve Daley’s ill-fated move from Molineux to Manchester City, and interest in the club soared.

Gray started like a runaway train; all towering headers, flying elbows and boundless enthusiasm and energy. He helped himself to four goals in his first three games - victories against Everton, Manchester United and Arsenal. It was a breathtaking introduction!

Hughes and Gray were two outstanding footballers and undeniably both of them enjoyed the greatest moments of their careers away from Molineux but this single season was about to make their short association with Wolves more than worthwhile.

Dave Thomas tests Derek Parkin at Turf Moor in 1970. But the winger surprisingly flopped when brought to Molineux.

Later in the season, Barnwell, happily over his harrowing ordeal, thought he had completed the jigsaw by signing the England winger Dave Thomas from Everton.

It seemed like great business at the time. Thomas was lightning fast, tricky and creative, and the prospect of him providing ammunition for an on-fire Gray and the still formidable John Richards was mind-boggling.

In reality, Thomas endured nightmares at Molineux. He was unable to find even a vestige of form and soon drifted out of the team into oblivion. It was a real shame and even now it’s hard to fathom why it all went so sour for such a good player.

With the season barely started, the League Cup was under-way. For obscure reasons, second-round ties were fought out over two legs and, after drawing at Turf Moor, Wolves comfortably dismissed Burnley at Molineux in a low-key affair that hardly stirred the pulses.

Full-back Geoff Palmer somehow scored in both games but, in truth, little major interest was in the air despite the keen affiliation many Wolves fans had with this competition after the success of 1974. In fact, our path to the final was hardly littered with memorable clashes.

The best performance was the 2-1 win at Crystal Palace in the third round. Palace, under a confident Terry Venables, were being dubbed ‘the team of the eighties’ by some of their manager’s cohorts in Fleet Street and Wolves winning at Selhurst Park was certainly not to their liking. Clearly, it annoyed El Tel too. Within weeks, he left Palace for QPR.

In the quarter-final, Wolves took three matches to see off a spirited Grimsby, who had beaten Everton in a previous round.

John Richards is chaired off Molineux after scoring one of the goals with which Wolves overturned Swindon's first-leg lead in the 1980 League Cup semi-final.

And the semi-final, over two legs, saw them struggle big time to pip Third Division Swindon – and the feeling of relief at Molineux after scraping home 4-3 on aggregate was clearly evident.  

Our opponents at Wembley, Nottingham Forest, beat a great Liverpool side in a titanic semi-final and so booked their third consecutive appearance in the final. They were short-odds favourites to make it three wins in a row.

Promoted with Wolves in 1977, they had then left us and just about every other club in their slipstream. Astonishingly, in their initial year back in the First Division, they had won the championship and then fabulously added the European Cup to sit alongside their domination of the League Cup.

Their transformation from obscurity to domination had been remarkable and, at the centre of it all, swaggered the eccentric genius that was their manager Brian Clough.

For those not around at the time, it’s almost impossible to recount the towering public profile he exuded. He transcended football; his deliberately outrageous opinions had the media fawning upon his every word with a mixture of awe, trepidation and deference, the like of which is usually reserved for a reigning monarch.

Clough was virtually able to ‘name his price’ as a TV pundit and would then proceed to offend whoever he liked with brazen impunity. He could be boorish, lavatorily crude or cuttingly critical one moment and charming, perceptive and side-splittingly funny the next.

Back in 1980, in his pomp, he quite simply was ‘Mr Football’ and just about Mr. anything else that took his fancy; and he gloried in his role as miracle worker.

Alongside him was his equally egocentric sidekick, assistant Peter Taylor. Neither for an instant possessed one iota of doubt that Barnwell, Barker or Wolves would stand in their way. We would be chewed up and spat aside like their previous opponents - Clough’s monumental ego demanded no less.

The big entrance: No sign of Cloughie - and Peter Daniel is probably shadowing John Robertson.

As a beaming John Barnwell led Wolves out at Wembley, resplendent in his best suit and as proud as punch, Clough showed his disdain for what to him was the routine of just another final. He allowed trainer Jimmy Gordon to lead out the star-studded Forest outfit.

All cameras trained their lenses towards Cloughie when he emerged from the tunnel and sauntered confidently to the dug-out. He was sporting an open leather coat, so his trademark green goalkeeper top was visible to his expectant audience.

Cup final conventions and etiquettes were not for him. He was a deliberate picture of non-sartorial elegance. But, as he made his theatrical stroll to the bench, the Band of the Queen’s regiment struck up their rendition of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ – later to become a Wolves theme song. It was a hint maybe that this might just be the day of the underdog.

As for the game itself, it was no great spectacle, but it didn’t lack for drama. Barnwell outflanked Clough in one significant area. Peter Daniel was deployed to shadow the manoeuvres of danger man John Robertson on the Forest left wing.

It worked a treat, as did Daniel’s long ball in the second half which caused the fateful Needham/Shilton collision that left Andy Gray with the ultimate in open goals gaping before his very eyes. From the terraces behind the goal, we saw Emlyn Hughes and Willie Carr throw up their arms in celebration before Gray’s left foot applied that memorable finishing touch.

I swear that, exactly as it had done six years earlier when John Richards’ winning shot hit the net, time stopped for a delicious moment. It was an ecstatic experience. And then almost immediately, came the awful realisation that there was so much time remaining. The prospect of getting this far and not winning was panic-inducing.

Paul Bradshaw is well covered by Derek Parkin, George Berry, Mel Eves and match-winner Andy Gray as he denies Dave Needham.

From then until the end, it was like The Alamo. Our goal led a charmed life, although keeper Paul Bradshaw never had to go to the extremes of sustained brilliance that his predecessor Gary Pierce unveiled in 1974.

Even now, 30 years on, when I savour the DVD, I still expect Forest to score. But they didn’t and, when the final whistle mercifully sounded, Robertson was appropriately in possession, with Daniel eyeballing him and jockeying him to the touchline, nullifying his threat to the last second.

The battle was won. And then, bedlam! Cue celebrations that were even wilder than six years previously. Up the steps, Hughes was hugged by our chairman Harry Marshall as he collected the cup.

My mind flashed back to’74 and the haunting look of misery on the face of Peter Swailes, the Manchester City chairman, when Mike Bailey lifted the trophy skywards. Wembley is no venue for losers, even for the Brian Cloughs of this world.

The crowning-glory moment of a great day.

A last word for the captain……Emlyn was a Shankly-inspired Liverpool Red. But I’m glad to recall that, not long before he died, he was among a group of former Wolves players paraded to the fans at half-time during a Molineux fixture.

He was given a fantastic reception that clearly delighted him. The characteristic beaming smile lit up his face as he waved in appreciation. For the fans and no doubt for Hughes himself, memories of a special Wembley occasion flooded back. It was magical, I promise you.

Mick Bradbury points himself out on a 1970s picture showing how big Wolves' playing staff used to be.

Micky Bradbury seemed to have the football world at his feet as a teenage goal machine at Molineux.

He scored five goals on his debut for England Schoolboys, attracted scouts from big clubs far and wide and even shared digs with Graeme Souness during a trial at Tottenham.

But the big time sadly eluded him and, at 54, he looks back instead at a professional life containing 27 years of graft as a postman and, in more recent months, duty as a part-time driver and escort of schoolchildren for Dudley Community Services.

“Of course I’d love to have made it in football and been set up better financially,” he says. “I do regret it in some ways.

“So many of the lads I played with at club and international level went on to have very good careers in the game and it’s natural to think that it could just as easily have been me.

“But there’s no point being bitter about it. I played for various local non-League clubs and made some really good friends, so I enjoyed my football even after I finished with Wolves and England Schoolboys.”

So in demand was Bradbury as a youngster that his father John quit his job as a bus and lorry driver to deal with the stream of big-club representatives.

“I sat in so many directors’ boxes, it was untrue,” he said. “There were always people coming to our house in Smethwick to see Mick and I wanted to be in to answer the door to them.

“Manchester United were after him, so were Birmingham, Albion and Cardiff, and Arsenal even offered to open a bank account for him if he signed there.

“We also had a visit from the Villa chairman in his Bentley and I warned him he was likely to have it pinched if he left it for long!

“They all made their offers and sales pitches and usually ended up by saying: ‘You don’t want him to become a driver like you, do you?’

“I used to go round in an old banger and clubs would promise to sort me out with a decent car if Mick signed for them and, sure enough, I had Joe Gardiner’s old Austin 1300 after he joined Wolves.”

Bradbury the eager teenager......

Bradbury Junior played at centre-forward in an England Schoolboys side also featuring David Price and Brian Hornsby, who carved out good careers at Arsenal, Steve Powell, who served Derby for many years, Dave Donaldson, who made the grade at Millwall, and Billy Rodaway, who totalled around 500 games, many of them for Burnley.

His five goals in a game came against the Republic of Ireland at Bramall Lane and he also scored against Scotland at Wembley and hit a beauty at the same venue against West Germany in an era when such fixtures attracted bumper attendances.

He grew up at Wolves alongside the likes of John Richards, Peter Eastoe, Steve Daley, Alan Sunderland and Barry Powell and once had Geoff Palmer as a lodger when the Cannock-born full-back grew tired of his digs near Molineux.

He went on tour to Zambia and Malawi with the club’s youngsters in 1971 and also visited Italy at a time when his grooming in the Midland Intermediate League and West Midlands League teams led to outings in the reserves.

But he added: “Bill McGarry was always more interested in the first team than the development of lads like me, so I’d play a couple of matches in the Central League and then lose my place to a first-teamer who was on his way back from injury. Don’t forget: The playing staff was about 40-strong in those days.

“I went to the League Cup final in 1974 as a guest of the club but left later that year. Then I had a couple of months with Walsall before going to play for clubs like Oldbury United, Walsall Sportsco and Gornal.

“I enjoyed it, although it was obviously different to the sort of football career I might have had. I thought I had signed for Albion at 13 after Alan Ashman came to the house but I found out I was not registered and I remember going for a look round at Birmingham when Stan Cullis was manager there.

“I didn’t really fancy Manchester United. They wanted a second look at me but there were so many lads having trials there that I said no.

“The club I really wanted to join was Tottenham. Bill Nicholson was the manager and I found Graeme Souness a great bloke. He was a couple of years older than me and looked after me while we were housed together.

Happy memories......

“Unfortunately, my mom thought I was too young to go to London, so I didn’t take it any further.”

Bradbury played nine times for England Schoolboys and once for the country’s under-18 side – against Scotland at Clyde but, having earned £7 a week as an apprentice at Molineux and £35 when he signed as a professional, he didn’t exactly cash in on his exciting potential.

He is now back living with his parents in Rowley Regis and recovering from a broken bone in his leg sustained in a recent fall on the ice.

Dave Clements in recent years - in front of a photo and sartorial souvenir depicting a powerful memory.

In the list of players Wolverhampton Wanderers have allowed to get away over the years – and there have been a few, like Alan Ball, Bob Wilson and Charlie Nicholas - the name of Dave Clements figures high.

The Ulsterman was an apprentice at Molineux in Stan Cullis’ final season there and made it as far as Wolves’ reserve team.

But he was allowed to leave for the princely sum of £1,500 and so embarked on a long and successful first-team career that brought him well over 400 appearances across a decade and a bit with Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday and Everton.

There was also the matter of 48 caps for Northern Ireland – service that was clearly so highly valued that he later had an 11-game run as their manager, starting at the age of only 29.

Clements now lives in Denver and speaks with an American twang, not surprising as it was as far back as 1976 that he first decided to make the States his home when he became a team-mate of Pele’s by joining New York Cosmos.

So how did he come to leave Wolves at a time when their slide from greatness must have left them crying out for the sort of stabilising force he became?

“I was there in my late teens and was in digs with Peter Knowles that were run by a Mrs Southwick,” he told Wolves Heroes. “Another couple of lads were with us – Kevin McMahon and a Jim Conway or Conroy.

“I played a few matches in the reserves but more so for the youth team and A team and remember players like Ken Knighton, Terry Wharton and Peter Broadbent – and Ron Flowers, who was so kind in making me feel comfortable.

“I recall going to train at RAF Cosford because the weather was so bad in the winter of 1963 and, like all kids, I was hopeful of getting on at what was still seen as a big club.

“But I suppose Stan Cullis didn’t think I was going to make the first team, at least not in a significant enough way, so he decided to release me.

“He put a fee on my head, though, and Bill McGarry, who was then Watford’s manager, flew to Belfast to meet me and my dad.

“I was very close to signing but didn’t really want to be so close to London, so, when Jimmy Hill came in from Coventry, I went there instead – and Bill was none too pleased!”

In Sky Blues' colours in the 1960s.

Clements, a left-footed utility man, was a big figure in the Highfield Road revolution, helping the Sky Blues to promotion above runners-up Wolves in 1966-67 and taking his appearance tally for them to 255 as they became established in the top flight.

Hill initially had the former amateur, schoolboy and youth international playing as a goal-scoring left-winger – a position that, at Molineux, was sealed off to all other pretenders by Dave Wagstaffe’s arrival. But that was after Clements had gone and Cullis had subsequently departed.

“It might have been different but I still look back on my Wolves time fondly – and this website has brought back some happy memories,” he added.

“I’m happy that I went on to have a good, long career in the game, in England and the USA, and remember going back to Molineux for my Everton debut (in a 1-1 draw in September, 1973) and crossing for Joe Royle to head in.”

Derek Dougan netted in the same fixture and criss-crossed Europe with the same Northern Ireland team as Clements for many years, the latter’s spell as player-manager starting as Belfast began to stage international matches again following a four-year gap brought on by political unrest.

More success was still to come his way but much further afield. Having accepted a lucrative offer to play with the Cosmos, he was selected for Team America against England, Brazil and Italy in the Bicentenary Cup.

Then he moved into coaching, serving Colorado Caribous, Denver Avalanche, St Louis Steamers and Kansas City Comets and being named US Coach of the Year in 1982 and 1987. But such heights are only part of his American dream.

Clements, now 63, sometimes gave the opinion in his playing days that he found the game as easy as taking sweets off a child. And, if that’s the case, it’s pay-back time now.

Clements in his Everton days.

Having run an Irish shop and worked as a salesman since he left football, he now runs the American arm of the business his brother-in-law set up five years ago; that of introducing the world’s only fully automatic candy floss vending machines.

“We’re trying to get into anywhere where kids are around and it has been going crazy,” he added. “We’ve had a TV feature on the business, Cotton Candy Vending, and we’re making the machines now in Chicago and other places, so life is still very busy.”

Alan Boswell at 65.

By David Instone

Check-list of questions at the ready, I decided to test his reactions in the opening minutes.

Is it correct you were a fanatical trainer? Did you provide your own kit? Was Lev Yashin your hero? Did you live in a pub during your early Wolves career? Would you sometimes wear Army boots for training? Did you keep a joke-book?

The answers came back in double-quick time: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and, finally: ‘No, where did you hear that?’

So, it can be confirmed that Alan Boswell, one of the fleetingly seen Wolverhampton Wanderers goalkeepers of the late 1960s, did experiment with normality at an early age and decide it wasn’t for him.

If you think playing only ten senior games for the club barely renders him worthy of such a profile on this website, click elsewhere now. If you’re sticking with it, brace yourself for a barrage of highly opinionated and controversial thoughts, not to say a little self-congratulation.

“Yes, I’m a trappy bast*&d,” he admits, underlining rightaway his liking for industrial language and the fact that his accent remains more Black Country than Shropshire. “People didn’t like me because I was always shouting at my defenders. They thought it was big-headedness, which in a way it was.

“But I’ll tell you this: It’s crap when pundits say the best goalkeepers are those who make the fewest mistakes. The top ones are the ones who work the hardest.

“David James is the best keeper England have had for ten years. And Gomez of Tottenham is a good keeper.

“If you come for two crosses, you’ll probably take two. If you come for 12, you’ll probably take ten and drop two.

“The reason those two have been ridiculed, as Bruce Grobbelaar occasionally was, is because they come for so much and sometimes make a glaring mistake. But they work hard, make a contribution and will earn their teams more points in a season than they will cost them.

“Foreign keepers are the best. People talk about them flapping around when they come for crosses but look at the big four clubs for a start. And once you’ve realised none of them have Englishmen in their goal, tell me how many English keepers have ever gone abroad to play. They don’t want our keepers abroad.”

Thrusting out a gloved hand at Chelsea in December, 1968.

Wow, breathless stuff! Best we have a break before we get stuck into the outfield positions. Let’s talk about those foibles…..

“People thought I was crackers with some of the things I did but I’ve been proved right,” he added. “John Ireland used to cause ructions with Ronnie Allen when he saw me warming up outside the goal area before games and told him that Bert Williams never did that.

“But now loads of keepers do it because having someone lashing the ball past you from ten yards into the net is no use as a warm-up.

“I was doing other things 45 years ago that came to be the norm. I wore big gloves all year round miles ahead of when they became widely seen over here. It was common sense to me to have something that gave you better grip than just your skin.

“My mother and wife would sew them, using table tennis rubber. Keepers were wearing them in Eastern Europe long before they were regularly worn here and I remember going to watch Lev Yashin play at Roker Park in the 1966 World Cup and being so impressed by him.

“I used to buy my own kit. It’s just a habit I got into. I’d buy a bottle green shirt from a high street store and choose my own shorts and socks, which I preferred to be black, like Yashin’s.

“I’d also get some lead and put them into my Army boots when I trained. I resented having to do stamina work because, as a keeper, I’d never get tired during matches but I was so dependent on agility, so I wanted to strengthen my leg muscles.

“If it was good enough for Muhammad Ali, it was good enough for me. The lead weights helped my spring because I had to work so hard and, when games came round, my football boots seemed so light.”

Boswell, brought up in Wednesbury and educated at the same school that Norman Deeley had attended, grew up a Wolves fan, his first trip to Molineux coming when he watched a home game against Arsenal from the back of a packed South Bank in the halcyon years.

His first break, though, came at Walsall, where he played more than 60 games before embarking on the first of 222 League matches for Shrewsbury, the town in which he has lived and worked for around four decades.

When signed by Ronnie Allen for Wolves, he lived in Wednesbury’s Highgate Arms pub – run by his mum – but there are no outward signs of a life spent staving off temptations. 

Although 65, he had just returned from a training run when he invited me in, a pint bottle of milk frequently touching his lips. Okay, there was something from Mr Kipling in the other hand but he still cuts a lean figure and said: “I’ve been 12st 4lb for as long as I can remember.

“Football was my life from ten to 30 and I was a very enthusiastic trainer. There were some great groundstaff lads at Wolves like Alan Sunderland, John McAlle, Steve Daley, Peter Eastoe, Jeff Wealands, Kenny Hibbitt, Rod Arnold and John Farrington, who would have shooting practice with me in the afternoons.

“And when I later joined Bolton, I would offer two bob if youngsters like Sam Allardyce and Peter Reid could beat me with headers. They didn’t really want to be out there but they were skint, so offering them incentives was a way to get them to test me.

Saving Peter Osgood's penalty two minutes after Mike Kenning had put Wolves ahead from the spot at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea later scored from another penalty to salvage a 1-1 draw.

“It doesn’t bother me when people say I was one of the worst keepers Wolves had. I only had ten games (all in 1968-69) for the club and in that time we won at Coventry and Sheffield Wednesday, got a 0-0 draw at the Albion and I won us a point by saving a penalty at Chelsea.

“My best games tended to be away and everyone will remember when we lost 6-0 at home to Liverpool. We defended very poorly that day and they just ran through us. I might have had a chance with a couple of the goals but I shouldn’t take all the blame.

“You need to control the midfield area to dominate a game and we completely lost that battle against Liverpool.”

Hold tight, it’s time for some more powerful thoughts from a man who also also played for Port Vale, Blackburn and Oswestry and who has for virtually all of his 35 post-football years run a business operating juke-boxes, pool tables and one-armed bandits.

“The players I really admire have more than just pure ability,” he added. “They also need football intelligence.

“Bill Shankly used to say that the first two yards were run between your ears and it’s for that reason that I like Berbatov, Scholes, Ronaldinho and the Brazilian Ronaldo. I also think Torres is better than Gerrard because he’s so quick and sharp, and I rated Robbie Keane higher at Wolves than I did Michael Owen at the same time.

“Beckham is a good player but not world-class and Lampard is over-rated. It’s easy to hit passes when you can see the whole pitch. I prefer players who can see all 360 degrees and still pick a pass, like Essien, Mascherano and Alonso. Vidic, Evra and Terry are good players as well.

“At 11, you need a kid’s eyes to show a brightness that tells you they want to learn. The top players are intelligent football-wise and so aware.”

Boswell, his attention initially divided between me and the Cheltenham Festival on TV, now has another distraction.

Agony against Liverpool, especially at the feet of four-goal no 9 Alun Evans.

He has dug from his dustiest drawer a book in which he used to write down all his training schedules.

“Look, I would write down what I did each day, so I could refer to it when I wanted to go back and repeat certain routines. Hang on, there’s a joke written down here – and another. I did keep a joke-book!”

The glove was now on the other hand. Had I heard the one about the Christians and the lions, and did I want to hear about the Pope and the blonde?   

Yes and, er……probably not.

David Woodfield now.

Some of the large gaps in Dave Woodfield’s post-Molineux life have at last been filled in - and confirmation received as to his current whereabouts.

But it sounds as though anyone hoping and expecting to see him rushing back to these shores when he turns 65 in October should brace themselves for disappointment.

Woodfield, possibly more than virtually any other former Wolves player, has shown a desire to roam the planet since he hung up his boots well over 30 years ago.

Which explains why he is currently living and working in Malaysia and is thought to have gone almost 12 years since last visiting the UK.

Wolves Heroes have not spoken to the rugged centre-half for this article, so remain grateful to his Warwickshire-based brother Paul for extracting a few of the answers we were seeking and to their niece Kate for supplying the picture.

And the first thing Paul told us was: “David is not one for living in the past. Now is now and he still has a busy life, as he has in various parts of the world for two or three decades.

“If I remember right, he hasn’t been back here since May, 1997 and I don’t get the idea that he is planning to come back to settle in the forseeable future.

“He has taught for several years at an international school around an hour from Kuala Lumpur and he also does some private football coaching.

“He went to Malaysia in 1997 on a three-year contract with a football club and moved to a nearby club when that deal came to an end. He has been teaching since then.”

Woodfield is one of the few players to bridge the Cullis and McGarry eras. He made 276 first-team appearances for the club from 1959 to 1970 and was pictured with Elton John when he returned to Molineux as a Watford player for his testimonial in 1973-74.

Ron Flowers looks on as Woodfield clears his lines at Nottingham Forest in 1963.

Although he found his senior opportunities limited in the late 1960s by the presence of Frank Munro, John Holsgrove and a young John McAlle, he clearly made enough of an impression on Bill McGarry to be asked to work as one of his assistants at Newcastle in the late 1970s and when the manager himself worked in the Middle East.

By the time ‘Duggie’ was spending a year or two on Tyneside, though, he appears to have acquired some wanderlust.

He went to Saudi Arabia with Jimmy Hill as part of the efforts to boost football in the desert kingdom and, despite a stint running a pub in Newmarket with his Wolverhampton-born wife Wendy, travelling continued to occupy his mind.

One of the three years he had in Qatar were spent as assistant national coach to his former Wolves team-mate Frank Wignall and he also worked in Oman before pitching up in Kuwait – a country where he married for the second time and then had to flee as a result of Iraq’s 1990 invasion.

“It’s strange how brothers can have such differing lives!” added Paul. “My family have always been content with holidays in England and have barely travelled abroad. But David is hardly ever in the country.

“I had a go at making it as a footballer but had some injury problems and in the end played for teams like Banbury United, under their previous name, and Redditch.

“But I remember our father taking us over to Molineux from our home in Leamington when David was about to sign for Wolves.

“I was in awe looking up at Stan Cullis as he spoke. It was a Sunday morning and Billy Wright was in there for treatment until being called away for the birth of his first child.

“If I remember right, David was most inspired by Manchester United as a kid and he went there for a while as a schoolboy. But he was very happy at Wolves and had some great times.”

The Woodfields’ wedding reception, when he was 20, was held at the Molineux Hotel, which is due to reopen next month. And team-mates recall how dedicated their long-time centre-half was.

Woodfield confronts Everton's Alan Ball in a 1966-67 FA Cup fourth-round tie watched by 53,439 at Molineux.

“When he lived in Fordhouses, he would walk to and from training,” Dave Wagstaffe remembers. “He would do anything to try to get fitter.”

And Phil Parkes says: “There used to be a shop near the Goal Post where he’d buy a bottle of milk to drink while he was walking. He was fitness-mad. And he’d play just the way that he trained, 110 per cent. He never left anything in the dressing room.

“Funnily enough, a chap asked me at the Hall of Fame dinner at Molineux recently where Duggie was these days and I told him I had no idea. He seems to be one of those former team-mates that no-one has been able to keep up with.”

His Home Counties tones are now littered with a trace of Kiwi and he has an unmistakable Southern Hemisphere tan.

This week, what’s more, he plays for the second time in the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan. 

But England, in particular its football and the West Midlands, is tugging hard at Neil Emblen.

Three and a half years on from his life-changing decision to see out his playing career some 14,000 miles away, the yearning for home is growing. It may soon be time to uproot his young family once more.

“I don’t regret any part of coming to New Zealand,” says the definitive popular utility man, who is likely to skipper Waitakere United against Adelaide United on Thursday in their first game in a tournament in which they stand two victories away from a crack at Manchester United.

“Just having the experience of living somewhere so different has been brilliant and it is a wonderful way of life over here.

“It’s 14 degrees in the winter where we live on Auckland’s north shore. We can see the ocean from the house and there are ten beaches within five minutes’ drive of the city.

With young daughters Maisie and Rosie in front of famous landmarks.

“I went all over Australia as an A-League player and, as a family, we’ve had holidays on the Gold Coast and in Sydney, Melbourne and Fiji, so we have basically seen the other side of the world for free.

“But my wife, who has recently gone back to work, still misses home. I lost my mum at 54 to skin cancer and, because of the grandkids, I don’t think we’d have even thought of staying over here if she had still been around.

“As it is, I play part-time now and will probably retire as a player in the next few months, so we’re likely to make the decision then.”

The 37-year-old’s career ambitions are an important driving force. His contract with Kiwi champions Waitakere includes coaching duties these days – new skills he intends to put to use sooner or later in a higher grade of football.

He plans to fire off a few job applications in the New Year and – Wolves fans will enjoy this bit - he actually dropped a line to Jez Moxey at Molineux as far back as last season.

“I applied a little optimistically when Chris Evans left Wolves,” he added. “I’d have loved his job but they wanted a more experienced candidate, which was understandable.

“It would have been strange to be working there with Mick McCarthy as he was my first manager at Millwall. He was obviously looking at players from the lower divisions and non-League even then.

“He saw me play for Sittingbourne in front of about 150 fans against Atherstone and a few days later he was giving me my debut against Tranmere before a crowd of 16,000. It was a major act of faith which I’ve never forgotten and we won the first five League games I played in.

In Fiji, with wife Julia on the other side of the shutter this time as well.

“When I joined Wolves the following summer, I don’t think he wanted to let me go but Millwall have always been a selling club and made a big profit on the £170,000 or so they paid for me.”

So what, more specifically, are his coaching plans?

“I would love to stay in football and have to bear in mind that there are 92 clubs over there and only one pro club here, Wellington Phoenix. I will probably start applying for jobs in January and I’m prepared to start at the bottom.

“I see my former team-mates like Kevin Keen, Mark Venus and Keith Downing in the system and realise that you do go off the radar a little over here in a country of only four million. It can be difficult living on the wages in New Zealand football, although I was only on £500 a week at Walsall at the end of my career in England.

“We’re on £50 a week win bonus for our regular games and a normal league game for us is watched by 1,000, although our stadium holds 5,000. There isn’t the money in the game here at the top level – it’s all about rugby and the All Blacks really. More people watch the All Blacks train than come to our games. I put ‘footballer’ on my passport and the airport officials think I’m a rugby player. They aren’t half as interested when they realise it’s soccer I play!

“I went to see the British Lions on their 2005 tour out here and I also went to some rugby when Keith Andrews was in the country staying with Darren Bazeley. I’m in contact as well with Kevin Muscat and Steve Corica, who are doing really well in Australia. Muzzy is a centre-back these days for Melbourne Victory and one of the most talked-about players in the A-League. Steve is playing at Sydney FC and has had a new lease of life, with some coaching duties thrown in.

“Other players we have had from the UK are Terry Phelan, Scott Gemmill and Matt Carbon. And Kevin O’Leary, who was a physio at Wolves and then Walsall, is over here running a business called Fit ‘n’ Well.”

Emblen, delighted to discover recently that his two spells at Molineux had earned him 50th place in the Legends section of this website, originally travelled Down Under to play for New Zealand Knights, only for them to go out of business and have their franchise taken over by Wellington Phoenix.

He has since been named Players’ Player of the Year at Waitakere, who are title-holders in the O-League, the Oceania eqivalent of the Champions League, and playing in a three-team group in this season’s competition that also contains Port Villa Sharks from the South Pacific Ocean island of Vanuatu.

Then there is the Club World Cup qualifying campaign that has transported Emblen and his team-mates on what to British ears will sound like a magical mystery tour, via Tahiti and the Solomon Islands……………more reasons not to pine too much for those midweek trips to Grimsby and Stockport.

Fergie’s United are present this time at a tournament Emblen sees as his last hurrah before hanging up his boots some time next year.

Not a bad place to bring up the kids.....

By then, he and his family should be clearer with their planning. “We looked on this as being something for us for a couple of years. My wife has always thought of it as an adventure.

“My Dad turns 60 next year and my sister is 40, so we’ll be back then for a big family celebration. I thnk we’ll have a good idea of what we want to do by next summer, although it’s possible we might even move back to England and then decide that being over here is what we really want long term.

“We would definitely aim to live in the Midlands if we came back. We might well still have had our house in Codsall but Bully came along for a viewing and, well, you have to try and help out your old mates don’t you!”

* The winners of Thursday’s Waitakere v Adelaide United game in Tokyo in the Club World Cup play Gamba Osaka three days later, with the winners of that tie facing Manchester United in the semi-final. The final is on Sunday, December 21.

Three and a half decades on from the last of his Molineux walk-outs! Danny Hegan at 65.

He walked in 20 minutes late, which was no surprise. I had been warned that there was British Summer Time, Greenwich Mean Time and Hegan Time.

“Sorry, Dave, I’ve had the plumbers round. Can I get you a drink?”

And, so, one of the bigger post-war Wolverhampton Wanderers enigmas sat down for his first media interview in more than a quarter of a century and proceeded to fill in what we might call ‘the missing years.’

Danny Hegan admits he frequently went absent as a member of the Molineux playing staff. It seems highly appropriate then that he has vanished again big time in his post-playing decades.

“It’s got to be 20 years since I saw any of the Wolves lads,” he says, without apparent regret, in not-so-harsh Glaswegian tones. “I was out of the area for a long time after I left the club but I’ve also been back in Birmingham for a good while now.

“I’m just the sort of bloke who moves on, makes new friends and mixes with them instead. I’m not a yesteryear man.

“John Richards left me a couple of tickets for a game at Molineux when he was a director and I also spoke to Frank Munro by phone just after The Doog died last year. But that’s about it. I told him I hoped to attend the funeral then found myself moving home at the time and, with all the upheaval, I couldn’t make it.”

All Wolves fans of a certain vintage will remember Danny as a bit of a lad in his prime and I was unsure what sort of condition I would find him in when, in late September after a month or more of searching, I was led by one of his close pals to his door a short walk from Birmingham’s Broad Street attractions.

Okay, he looked like he’d had a few good nights out but the memory was still good, the speech clear, articulate and interesting. And he was well spruced up for our follow-up meeting several weeks later. So, to confront the most intriguing bit first, where has he been for the last 30 years?

“I had 11 seasons coaching football at Butlins,” he started. “Eight at Clacton and three at Minehead, and I had a great time. Colin Bell headed up the operation and Jimmy Greenhoff and Martin Peters also coached there, as did Bobby Moore as a guest.

“There were dozens of good players, although young boys, for whatever reason, often find other things to do with their time and drift away. But one of the best I saw was a small kid who was voted Boy of the Season once at Clacton – Kevin Keen. I’ve remembered him because I played against his dad and I wasn’t surprised that he made the grade, at Wolves and elsewhere.

“I loved taking the youngsters for days out at Arsenal, Millwall and QPR but nothing lasts forever and, when the coaching stopped, I went down to Plymouth to work for a year or two as a labourer for a plumber.

“Then I went to Corby, which is half-English, half-Scottish, full of Rangers and Celtic fans. I worked as an industrial cleaner for a friend who had his own business and it’s the best job I’ve ever had apart from in football. We had a great set of blokes and I enjoyed going to work.

“We’d be particularly busy when the factories around Milton Keynes, Daventry and Northampton shut down for holidays. I could be cleaning machines, painting or hoovering and I might have stayed there a long while but I had a yearning to come back to the West Midlands.

“I returned in about 1991 and did a bit more labouring and cleaning. There have been some different jobs as well, though. I worked back-stage in the Night Out in Birmingham for a while and I’ve spent three years doing odd jobs at Test Matches at Edgbaston and at the women’s tennis tournament just up the road from there.

“I’m 65 now and well retired, unless it’s just something like moving furniture for pals who ring up. I was hit by asthma in 1997 and have the inhalers but I’ve kept good health even if I do still like the occasional cigarette.”

He has enjoyed a drink over the years, too, although I notice that the pint I have bought him lasts the full 90 minutes of our conversation.

So where did that Jack The Lad image spring from? “The rebel in me took over,” he admits. “Bill McGarry was my manager for nine years altogether and was different class to me. I trusted him so much that, three times at Ipswich, I had signed contracts without even looking at the wage and bonus figures at the bottom of the form. I knew everything would be all right if he said it was.

Taking on Arsenal at Highbury.

“I enjoyed my time at Wolves as well, although I know I didn’t fulfil the potential I had. I would describe myself as a very competent midfielder and the Wolves fans will be pleased that they saw a better side of me than the Albion fans had just before.

“But I had problems finding a house at one point, lived in a hotel in West Bromwich and needed a kick up the arse every now and again.

“This streak came out and if we were told to report at 9.45am, I would go in at 9.50. It’s just the way I was. I was never a betting man but would come into Birmingham for a drink and Bill fined me a few times; my fault, I just didn’t fancy going in.

“Eventually, I was told I could go and drink with my pals for a week. Bill came to the ATV studios near my house and told them I was suspended without pay. They showed a clip at the same time of me scoring at Old Trafford by chipping Alex Stepney from 20 yards.

“Sammy Chung handed me my training gear and I would go and run for an hour in the park on my own every day, then go to the pub.”

Hegan hasn’t been married since divorcing in 1975. Surely the opportunity for some liaisons arose, though, in his time at Butlins? “Can ducks swim?” he asks with a special twinkle. “I didn’t need to go knocking on chalet doors either. It was easier than that.”

A full and varied life, then, away from his 73 Wolves games and eight goals, and his seven Northern Ireland caps. He was also successfully sued by Billy Bremner over an article in which he was colourfuly quoted about the infamous Wolves v Leeds game of 1972. Odhams Newspapers, owners of the Sunday People, coughed up for him, as well as for themselves, and it’s a subject he doesn’t want to revisit all these years on. “Enough’s been said about that,” he says. “Let’s move on.”

There’s a school of thought that McGarry wanted Hegan to succeed Mike Bailey as skipper, so how does he feel now about the obvious lack of dedication that almost certainly cost him a longer and more rewarding career?

“I don’t have any regrets other than joining Albion,” he reveals. “It was the wrong time for me to go there and the wrong time for them to sign me, and it just didn’t work out.

“I don’t even regret not having a proper chance with Celtic when I was a teenager. I was working as an apprentice plasterer when I had a trial there in the late 1950s, even before Jock Stein’s time as manager. I was invited back to play in a Probables v Possibles match but had signed for Albion Rovers by then.”

Alongside the colours of his beloved Celtic.

The green and white scarf draped above the hearth in his modest flat leaves no-one in any doubts as to his loyalties. It is a replacement garment for the original Lisbon Lions one he gave to his niece when she went to watch Martin O’Neill’s team play Porto in the UEFA Cup final in Seville in 2003.

When we met for the second time, Hegan was talking, with some apprehension, about the forthcoming Champions League game away to Manchester United, who he calls the ‘best team I have ever seen on the break in the land.’ And he relayed his fears that an early United goal could kill the tie.

He still loves his football and it’s clear that Wolverhampton Wanderers, for whom he played in the first UEFA Cup final in 1972, were an important part of his life once. But they came and went and he will never be chucked out of a pub for boring the regulars with his reminiscences about them.

By David Instone

Les Wilson, with daughters Natasha and Tanya, earlier this year.

For what he did in taking a small football country to the World Cup finals, there’s a bit of Jack Charlton or even Mick McCarthy.

For the way he later used his coaching talents when adopting a measured and highly respected overview, he is seen as a sort of Stateside Trevor Brooking.

And when offered the job as CONCACAF deputy secretary in 1999, he did what Roy Keane would no doubt love to do again and told the federation’s outspoken president Jack Warner to sling his hook.

Les Wilson’s first-team career at Wolverhampton Wanderers may have been relatively brief but his 40-year stay in the game has been one of enormous achievement.

Here is a man whose belief in fair play and honesty earned him the nickname ‘The Reverend’ among such prominent 1960s Molineux characters as Derek Dougan, Mike Bailey and Dave Wagstaffe.

And, by playing at Maradona’s World Cup in Mexico almost a quarter of a century ago, Wilson’s Canada side were perhaps benefitting from a more acceptable Hand of God as they appeared in the finals for the first time.

It is a remarkable story on both sides of the Atlantic and one that is currently in the early stages of being committed to print in an autobiography.

Born in Manchester but raised from the age of seven in Vancouver, Wilson enjoyed such success in a variety of roles that he was inducted into Canada’s football Hall of Fame earlier this year.

The reasons are clear. He also took his country to the 1984 Olympics, to the gold medal at the 1989 Francophone Games in Morocco and to an impressive triumph at the 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup in the USA. In addition, he has managed the men’s national under-17s, the women’s side to World Cups in China in 1988 and the USA in 1999 and the men’s national under-20s to their World Cup in Malaysia in 1997.

The young hopeful at Molineux.

It all started, though, in Wolverhampton at the club who remain so dear to his heart that no player has embraced the www.wolvesheroes.com concept as eagerly as he has.

“I believe I was the first North American-developed player to play over 100 games in the English top division and possibly the first to play 170 matches on your side of the Atlantic,” Wilson told us from his home 4,800 miles away. “I probably played around 120 games for Wolves in all.

“Going over there, you went through the school of hard knocks. I was very fortunate that I was playing against some of the best players in the world at that time. I have very fond memories of those days at Wolves, both of the games I played in and the colleagues I played with.

“I believe the experience of being around such good, solid players taught me how to win games at elite and international level and I am obviously very thankful to have had a career in football spanning four decades.”

Wilson was first spotted by Wolves on the Canadian leg of a 1963 tour that they spent largely in the United States. As a 17-year-old, he had become the youngest boy ever selected for the British Columbia All Stars team when named for games against Liverpool and Red Star Belgrade, both champions or champions-elect in their domestic leagues.

He was subsequently invited to spend time at Molineux and signed a professional contract in 1964, making his debut in the Second Division game against Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park in December, 1965.

Homesickness was a problem and Jack Howley, Wolves’ long-serving secretary and general manager, was sufficiently concerned to write to the youngster’s parents, calling him ‘a grand boy of such splendid character’ and promising them he was in safe hands so far from home.

Whatever we may think of the likelihood of high-ranking officials of Manchester United or Chelsea finding the time to send such assurances these days, Wilson clearly made the right impression in that era of more frequent social niceties.

Along with Alan Sunderland, he can lay claim to be one of the most versatile performers in Molineux history, occupying eight different jerseys in an age when shirt numbers actually reflected players’ positions. He made another slice of history when donning a ninth number (12) and becoming the first Wolves substitute ever to score in a League game – a 4-2 defeat at Everton early in 1967-68.

Always proud in Wolves' colours.

His best season was 1968-69, in which he made 40 appearances, but nothing made him prouder than flying back across the big pond in the summer of 1967 and helping win the United States Soccer Tournament as a member of Ronnie Allen’s Wanderers squad.

Although a 25cents Washington Whips (Aberdeen) v Los Angeles Wolves official programme sits in his collection of keepsakes, it was on that long, successful trip that his ecclesiastical nickname came under greatest threat.

“The tag stuck for most of my career, not only in England, but also in North America and on the FIFA circuit,” he added. “I have strong principles, always have had.

“But, in 1967, my parents and brother Garry drove for 26 hours from Vancouver to San Francisco to see me play for Wolves against ADO from Holland. We had just drawn 1-1 with Shamrock Rovers in Los Angeles and I thought I had played well. Maybe Ronnie Allen did not think the same way and I didn’t start in the next match.

“We lost 1-0 after going seven or eight matches unbeaten and I was extremely disappointed for my parents and Garry that I had only played briefly as sub. I had a go at Ronnie after the game. I was only 20, a little naive and innocent compared with some of my team-mates but I was never a ‘yes man’ to anybody. My parents then drove to LA in the hope of seeing me play in the return against ADO at The Coliseum. At least I played in this one, so they did see me in action before leaving on their return journey to Vancouver, 30-odd hours from LA.

“When Ronnie left Wolves, I had a good run in the team for over two years. But I have to say that when I met him at a game at West Bromwich one evening quite a bit later, he was very complimentary about my passion for the game and my determination.”

Wilson moved to Bristol City in 1972 and played 49 games there before switching to Norwich in 1973 and back to Vancouver the following year. Injury cut short his playing days in 1978 in his early 30s but he was about to embark on the second half of his football career.

Moving into coaching, he helped Vancouver Whitecaps to their North American League ‘Soccer Bowl’ championship triumph in 1979 and stayed with them as staff coach, director of player development and club administrator until 1983. He was then made national manager and administrator – a position he held for no fewer than 18 years as he took Canada to heights they had not previously scaled.

Back in Canada in later years.

The fond memories he had of Los Angeles from playing there with Wolves were underpinned when his side reached the quarter-finals of the 1984 Olympics in the same city and then made it to the World Cup finals in 1986. Much later, the country improbably won the CONCACAF Gold Cup but it was the inaugural Francophone Games in 1989 that provided one of his most inspiring memories.

“That was one of the most gratifying days in my career,” said Wilson of a 4-1 Canadian win against hosts Morocco. “To go in front of 85,000 rabid fans and win the way we did was very special. It was against all the odds; a magnificent win.”

The burden of international management didn’t stop him remaining busy elsewhere. In 1985, he was one of three founding directors of the Vancouver 86ers, the club who won four Canadian Soccer League championships in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And he remained happier in dug-outs than in suits. A reluctance to uproot his family from Canada to New York prompted him to say no to an approach to work alongside Warner, a man he believes acted disgracefully by openly stating in much more recent times that he didn’t think England should host a World Cup finals.

Les Wilson and wife Lois at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Wilson was nevertheless appointed in 1992 to the CONCACAF Commission Panel in New York, then, in June, 2000, as executive director of the British Columbia Soccer Association.

Around the time of his Hall of Fame induction in Woodbridge, Ontario, last spring, he was said to have made an ‘overwhelmingly positive impact on soccer in Canada, North America and CONCACAF’ and he still does some football consultancy work while in semi-retirement.

“I am naturally very proud of what I have been able to achieve in football,” said Wilson, now 61. “But, more than that, I feel privileged that it has happened to me.”

Cappuchino time in Brum.

By David Instone

He talks a great game and, in the coming years, Mark Burke is confident of showing he can also coax one out of players.

For now, he divides his time between working in England in land property and seeing his girlfriend and seven-year-old son in Holland. The long-term plan, though, is to move into coaching – a door he firmly believes will open.

“I know it’s five or six years since I stopped playing but all my contacts remain in place and I still speak to them all regularly,” he said. “And I’m doing my coaching badges now, so I’m not at the job-seeking stage yet.

“I see so many managers and coaches who are on the treadmill and can’t get off. One year, they are coaching at Carlisle, the next they are helping with the Academy at Plymouth. They obviously need to work and football is the only thing they know, so they go after whatever job becomes available and it might not be the one that suits them.

“I don’t want to get on that treadmill and, although I have to keep an open mind about where opportunities might crop up, I’ve got a feeling that I might be falling out with people too often if I work in England!”

Mark’s Dutch base is near Maastricht in the south-east of the country, so I had visions of us hooking up during my pre-Euros trip to watch the Holland v Denmark friendly in Eindhoven in late May. Okay, it was in Coffee Republic just off Birmingham’s Great Western Arcade that we eventually found ourselves face-to-face for the first time since he left Molineux more than 14 years ago but his thoughts were no less fascinating for the fact he had just popped into his home city from his Mom’s in Erdington.

Here, I was quickly reminded, was a man of progressive thought and one still in love with the beautiful game – a title he might consider to be more appropriate away from the country where he flattered and in many ways fell short in his playing days.

Having been shown the door as a youngster at both Aston Villa and Middlesbrough, he was taken to Wolves by Graham Turner for £25,000 in March, 1991, and had his best run at Molineux when scoring eight times in the 1992-93 season.

Not the most popular kit ever seen at Molineux! Mark Burke (centre) and Mark Venus in action in Wolves' pre-season friendly at Crewe in August, 1993.

Maybe his impact would have been longer-lasting had Sir Jack Hayward’s spending on players not increased substantially the following summer and bigger names not been brought in. But anyone who watched Burke during a Wolves career that spanned 77 games and 14 goals up to his release in 1994 could see he was gifted.

It was no coincidence that he was once praised by Glenn Hoddle after facing him in a Swindon v Wolves game, or that he subsequently had trials with Tottenham and Sporting Lisbon. He was a pure footballer, not one for the hurly-burly, and the fact that he made a good living from playing for four years in Holland suggests that his talents were appreciated more elsewhere.

“It may have looked like I was lazy because I had a loping run and wasn’t particularly physical,” he added. “But I wasn’t lazy and nobody in Holland ever said I was. It drove me mad if I saw indiscipline in training and I loved the fitness side of the game.

“It was my reaction to losing the ball that was slow. In Holland, they called it the ‘Grieving Moment’ – that second or two when you were so disappointed at giving away possession that you cursed yourself and didn’t adjust quickly enough to what might happen next. One of my Dutch coaches told me it was a habit I had to snap out of.

“In England, I often heard coaches say: ‘Let’s get stuck into them, do this and that and, if we get chance, play some football.’ That drove me nuts. You should always try to play football, not just as an after-thought.”

Burke, who joined Port Vale for a year in the mid-1990s after being freed by Graham Taylor, is good pals with another former Wolves midfielder, Phil Robinson, although from their time together at Villa. Their Molineux careers didn’t overlap.

He is also close to Pim Verbeek, his coach for two years at both Fortuna Sittard and Tokyo-based J2 League club Omiya Ardija and a man who later worked as Gus Hiddink’s assistant with the South Korean World Cup semi-finalists of 2002. Verbeek now manages the Australian national team after filling the same post with South Korea, so he’s a friend in high places, as is Bert van Marwijk, the former Fortuna assistant who has just succeeded Marco van Basten as Dutch national coach.

In action in Romania......

Burke learned Spanish while in Japan and French during his stay with Rapid Bucharest, where he became an instant hero with a last-minute winner on his debut away to rivals the club hadn’t beaten for 35 years. He is also fluent in Dutch and you suspect he believes that most of the useful things he has learned about coaching and management have come from his time overseas.

“From a young age, before I even played for England schoolboys, I visualised myself working abroad,” revealed the 39-year-old, who scored a hat-trick at Wembley in his teens against his Dutch counterparts. “One of my schoolteachers said the same.

“And I really enjoyed playing in other countries. The Dutch, in particular, are encouraged to be patient, to wait and wait until a gap opens up. It’s draining mentally as well as physically when you don’t have the ball and your opponents are passing and passing. Someone, sooner or later, will switch off for half a second, and an opening will present itself.

“Yes, sometimes they over-play and I probably seemed like a direct player to them. They wanted to play the perfect cross whereas my philosophy once you had worked a good position was to put the ball in the area and leave someone else to make the run to get on the end of it.

“I became a consistent ‘six or seven out of ten’ player in Holland. That’s because their game is geared to keeping the ball and I was pretty good at that. And, if you know you are settled in a team, you relax and you aren’t trying to make a special pass all the time.

“I learned so much in Holland. I once faced Edgar Davids and was told off for tracking back with him. They wanted the defenders to pick him up and I remember one centre-half telling me to move a metre to the left when we were defending!

“It has disappointed me this summer to hear some people saying England would have won the European Championships if we had been there. How many chances do we need? And it was our own fault that we didn’t qualify.

“What I would say is that I don’t believe foreigners are any better technically than we are.
I defy anyone to name a better technical player than Paul Scholes. It’s just that our players aren’t encouraged to play the same way as the foreigners and our game is so fast.

“There were times in games in England when I thought after 20 minutes I was going to have a heart attack. If you put three passes together, the crowd thought it was something special. But, if you still hadn’t gone anywhere, they would be urging you to knock it into the area.”

Fernando Ricksen, a member of the Zenit St Petersburg squad who won this year’s UEFA Cup, Mark Van Bommel and Aston Villa defender Wilfred Bouma were team-mates of Burke’s at Fortuna while Jari Litmanen, Marc Overmars, the De Boer brothers, Frank and Ronald, and Patrick Kluivert were among those he saw close up in opposing sides.

Holland had a good European Championships this summer despite their quarter-final dismantling by Russia – and Dutch football has certainly been good for Mark Burke.

Still more than able to hold his own in the Wolves side who won this summer’s Midland Masters, he is a well-rounded character whose views on the game make compelling listening. And he has clearly garnered much from the coaches and managers he has worked with and even followed at a distance.

.....and also in Japan.

“I won’t know until I have a go at it whether my beliefs are unrealistic,” he added. “But I’m convinced that so much of coaching and managing is about educating players. I read an interview in which Felipe Scholari talked about the need to get to know footballers as people rather than just players.

“Lads come into the game from all sorts of backgrounds, so why should you treat them all the same?

“Our lad, Marcos, is an Ajax fan and has a different social background to some of the other kids, so I would hope and expect that the coaches will see take the trouble to find out what makes him tick. At one club I was at, there was a lad who had lost both of his parents by the age of 12 but the coach was always on at him. I’m sure he didn’t need that. He required a different sort of handling.”

Mark Burke once told me at Molineux that the only players he would pay to watch were those who could do things he couldn’t; not just those who could run. He had a vision then and he still has one. He might not be negotiating the financial side of property sales with his architect business partner for too much longer.