Ex-Wolves manager Ian Greaves has died at his home in Ainsworth, Lancashire.

The 76-year-old had only half a season - and most of a close season - in charge at Molineux in 1982 before being sacrificed in the Derek Dougan-fronted takeover.

But he worked extensively elsewhere and has been a mentor to the likes of boyhood Wolves fan Sam Allardyce and one-time John Barnwell target Peter Reid, both of whom played for him at Bolton.

Wolves denied Greaves’ Bolton promotion back to the top flight in 1977 when they celebrated their  securing of the Second Division title by winning 1-0 at Burnden Park on the last day of the season.

That result sent Nottingham Forest up instead, Bolton also having been pipped on the last day of 1975-76. But Greaves wasn’t to be denied and took the club up the year after Wolves.

He also managed Huddersfield, Oxford and Mansfield and won a League Championship medal with Manchester United as well as playing for them in an FA Cup final defeat, by coincidence against Bolton, in 1958.

Greaves had a full life in football but it might have been wiped out at the age of 25. He was told to take his bag and travel as cover for Roger Byrne on the plane that crashed in Munich. But a late rethink prompted Matt Busby to take Geoff Bent instead for the fateful game away to Red Star Belgrade.

“Geoff never came back - and he was my best mate,” Greaves recalled much later: “I now celebrate two birthdays every year, one on the day of the crash. But for the grace of God, it would have been me there.”

On top of the world and living like royalty in Queenstown.

Bobby Gould is gritting his teeth and getting through his latest ‘posting’ as best he can.

These are certainly testing months for the 62-year-old, who had two prolific spells at Molineux in approaching two decades as a player, and is currently holed up on the other side of the world.

As our pictures show, he is not enjoying the winter sunshine one little bit and says his unofficial duties with high-riding top-flight New Zealand club Hawke’s Bay have left him with no opportunity at all for fun and family time.

It has clearly been all slog and no play as he continues to selflessly forsake the usual festive trappings like flu, postponements and blow-torching ice off the car windscreen.

Honoured by the locals already!

The photographic evidence is overwhelming - Bobby is pining for British germs, frost and belt-tightening, and patiently counting off the days until he can escape his Southern Hemisphere hell.

Barbecues, sea fishing, taking a dip in the private pool……the homesickness is all too understandable for a man whose suffering was eased by a recent 3-1 win over the Otago United side coached by his former Wimbledon charge Terry Phelan.

No wonder Gould longs for the Tuesday nights when he can once more sit under the cover of a leaking stand roof at some lower-division ground back home in the search for more new talent.

It’s a hard life, for sure, but someone has to take the lead out there in keeping the wheels of the football industry turning.

Three generations of Goulds slumming it out on the Pacific.

And, not to worry, the whole ordeal will be over for him come April.

Derek Parkin - New Year birthday.

1st - Newcastle 1 Wolves 4 (Steve Bull 4) (1990)

2nd - Derek Parkin was born (1948)

3rd - Kenny Hibbitt was born (1951)

5th - Bert Williams made his Wolves debut (1946); Billy Crook made his Wolves debut (1946); Tom Galley made his Wolves debut (1935)

6th - Jimmy Mullen was born (1923); Frank Munro made his Wolves debut (1968); Willie Carr was born (1950)

7th - Ron Flowers played his last Wolves game (1967)

8th - Norman Deeley played his last Wolves game (1962)

12th - Sylvan Ebanks-Blake made his Wolves debut (2008)

17th - Wolves 1 Manchester United 0 (2004)

20th - Derek Dougan was born (1938)

23rd/26th - Wolves 2 Norwich 1 on aggregate in League Cup semi-final (1974) 

27th - Bobby Thomson (full-back) made his Wolves debut (1962)

31st - Bert Williams was born (1922); John McAlle was born (1950);

George Miller pictured before Wolves' game at Arsenal in 1964-65.

George Miller, part of Molineux’s mid-1960s Scottish contingent, has died from cancer at the age of 69.

The Glaswegian was brought south in the autumn of 1964 for the then considerable sum of £28,500, making his debut in a home defeat against Nottingham Forest on October 31.

He played 28 League games and eight FA Cup ties that season as Wolves were relegated, scoring twice in a victory at home to Sheffield Wednesday and once in the final match against Liverpool at Molineux. 

Miller also played the first nine games of the Second Division campaign in 1965-66 but appeared to be made a scapegoat for the 9-3 defeat at Southampton in mid-September as he was dropped after it, replaced by John Holsgrove and never played for the club again.

“George was a good player and signed at about the same time as me and Davy Wagstaffe,” said his former Molineux team-mate Hugh McIlmoyle.

“As fellow Scots, we used to knock about Wolverhampton together and he enjoyed the dogs and horses.

“I was a good friend of his and saw him a couple of times in Larkhall, Glasgow, after we had finished playing.

“He was slim, about 5ft 11in and very left-footed. Unfortunately, he joined Wolves at a time when there was a lot of transition in the playing staff and he probably didn’t settle. I know his family weren’t too happy in the Midlands and he jumped at the chance of joining Hearts when they went in for him.”

Competent a player though Miller proved himself to be at Wolves, he was far better known north of the border for helping Jock Stein’s Dunfermline win the Scottish Cup in 1961 and for playing 13 consecutive games for them in Europe - an appearance record that included a vital goal in a two-leg win over Everton.

The Scottish under-23 international and Scottish League player later skippered Hearts to the final of the same competition before moving on to Falkirk, where he was encouraged to take on coaching duties.

George Miller, seated, at his 2005 induction into Dunfermline's Hall of Fame. We are grateful to Dunfermline Athletic for the provision of this photo.

Miller then managed both Dunfermline and Falkirk for a combined total of four and a half years, his time at East End Park including the feat of producing the highest-scoring team in Britain in 1972-73 as promotion back to the top flight was won.

He was also a caretaker boss at Hamilton Academicals, where he worked mainly on the commercial side.

A minute’s applause is to be held in his memory at Dunfermline tomorrow night, where Livingston are the visitors and for whom he played 239 matches. The funeral is next Monday.

Stewart Ross - accountant and top-flight footballer.

There can hardly have been a story like it in post-war Molineux history - the tale of how an accountant took a phone call at his office one Thursday and was asked if he fancied a game for Wolves the following Saturday.

It wasn’t any old match either but a senior debut 41 years ago this week in front of more than 53,000 against the reigning League champions and the side who would lift the European Cup five months later.

Wolves v Manchester United was a big deal in anybody’s language; spectacularly so on that occasion for Stewart Ross as his training was restricted to a couple of nights a week with Joe Gardiner and Jack Dowen by the demands of his full-time job a few hundred yards along Waterloo Road.

The former Wolverhampton Grammar School lad nevertheless went in against Matt Busby’s men, Best, Charlton, Law and Co, deputising at inside-forward for Dave Burnside as Wolves sought revenge for the 4-0 Boxing Day hiding they had received at Old Trafford four days earlier.

“I didn’t go to the game at United but Ronnie Allen and Harry Marshall were always keen that I should sign as a pro and I had the call to say I was in for the return match,” Ross said.

“The Press came along to take some pictures of me at the ground and I was told to report to the hotel on the Saturday lunchtime for our pre-match meal.

“I wasn’t too nervous and enjoyed the first half, although I was marking Bobby Charlton and obviously had my hands full. We scored through Paddy Buckley and I think it was 1-1 at half-time but Bobby played a one-two behind me to score soon afterwards and we lost 3-2. Mike Bailey scored our other goal.

In reflective mood....

“Graham Hawkins was injured later on and I went into defence, which was my more usual position because I was always a centre-half as a lad. And at the end, Ronnie Allen came in and said I’d done better than he thought I would!”

Ross, 22 at the time and now 63, might well have lined up in the League fixture at home to Everton a week later as well but had to be content with going on for skipper Bailey. There was a logical explanation for his demotion to the no 12 shirt - Wolves had signed Frank Munro from Aberdeen in the meantime and fielded him instead.

Opportunity did fleetingly knock again, though. He was introduced for the injured Dave Wagstaffe early in the following season’s 0-0 draw at Albion and included a trip to Southampton among the several other matches in which he warmed the bench.

Ross, born in Woking but brought up in the West Midlands after his father’s job in the civil service brought the family north, subsequently spent six happy years at Telford, where Ron Flowers and Jimmy Murray were familiar faces from Molineux.

He is now resident in Codsall and still works in his chosen field, as a partner at Muras Baker Jones near Wolverhampton’s Central Baths, having previously spent 38 years at the company that became known as BDO Stoy Hayward.

Stewart Ross, in tracksuit top, lines up with Wolves at The Dell in 1968.

So how does he look back at a six-year Molineux career that was confined largely to the Central League?

“I regret not giving it more of a go but feel that I’ve had the best of both worlds,” he added. “I thoroughly enjoyed my football and didn’t have to rely on it for an income.

“I joined Wolves at 19 purely as an amateur, then they asked me to go part-time pro, which I did. I worked full-time in accountancy and often studied at the weekends as well, so I was never seen on the pre-season team pictures. It was a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

“Fortunately, there is this one picture taken before a game at Southampton to prove I was a Wolves player!”

Mick Gooding - captain of Wolves' triumphant Masters side.

Wolves’ team of Masters Cup champions are keen to test themselves against their counterparts from abroad.

Organisers are investigating the viability of staging a European version of the event that Wolves won thrillingly at the expense of Manchester City at the NEC in September.

And the news has been welcomed by Mick Gooding, the man who skippered the side to victory after they had lost in the national final the year before and in one of the previous finals.

“It would be great if a European Masters could tournament could get off the ground,” he said. “Obviously, now isn’t the easiest time to finance a new venture like this but we’re told the idea is being looked at and they are keen to spread the brand.

“We’d very much like it to happen, wherever it might be. Apparently, there was a tournament in Dubai recently involving former Manchester United and Liverpool players - something like that for us to aim at in the future would be terrific.

“But even a short hop over to Europe would be exciting and a chance to face sides from other countries.”

Gooding, an area manager in a Home Counties estate agency, is thrilled by the distant domestic prospect of a one-two by a couple of his former clubs in this season’s Championship promotion race.

As a BBC local radio summariser, he has watched every one of Reading’s League games so far and will be at today’s Boxing Day home clash with Cardiff and then Sunday’s match at Southampton.

And, just over a month before Wolves go to the Madejski Stadium, he warns that Reading will continue to push hard in the pursuit of Premier League football.

A Third Division title winner in 1989.

“I don’t think they have played so well since the last international break because some of the football just prior to that was outstanding,” he added.

“But the mentality of their players is that they don’t just want to go up - but to go up as champions. And it would be the ideal scenario for me if Reading and Wolves were promoted automatically together.

“Reading have so much pace and energy in their side that opponents have had trouble coping with them.”

Geordie-born Gooding, 49, played 54 games for Wolves in the late 1980s, scoring five goals. For Reading, he made 368 appearances and had spells both as a coach and as caretaker co-manager.

Christmas might be a great time for the vast majority of us but, as in his playing career, Paul Jones is finding that it’s one of the busiest parts of his year.

The outfield version of the two former Wolves players of that name has been delivering mail for a living for the last four years and is no doubt feeling the festive strain.

But he said: “My work is local round the Rugeley area and the hours and outdoor life suit me. It is also decent exercise.

“I used to deliver and install office furniture until I was made redundant, so this is fairly similar.”

Bilston-born Jones, now 43, made 15 appearances in Graham Turner’s midfield after being signed in 1989-90 before going on to spend a couple of months in Hong Kong and then play for Kettering, Stafford Rangers, Hednesford and Chasetown.

More recently, he had the satisfaction of serving as no 2 to Charlie Blakemore when Chasetown achieved back-to-back promotions and helping plot two historic FA Cup runs that were ended by Oldham and Cardiff.

He quit life at the non-League club last summer, though, as away games became increasingly difficult to fit around his work schedule and has since found a new Saturday ‘fix’ by covering home games at Wolves, Walsall, Port Vale, Shrewsbury and Kidderminster for the Press Association through the PFA.

Standing proud in front of Molineux's old North Bank.

“I was at Chasetown for five years, so it was a wrench to leave,” he added. “I’m enjoying the reporting, though, and glad to be involved in the game in another capacity. 

“Coming to work at Molineux has been special as I was always a Wolves fan and idolised John Richards. You can imagine how proud I was to play some matches for them as well, although I’m better known for playing around 150 times for Walsall.”

Dave Thomas in recent years.

Dave Thomas, the former England midfielder who failed to come off as a £325,000 Molineux signing, insists he’s perfectly happy in his retirement - and has the sun tan to prove it.

The Durham-born 58-year-old stood down in July following 17 years as a PE teacher, having previously lost the match-day summarising work he did on the airwaves for several seasons.

But, from his home near the Hampshire/Sussex border, he said: “I’m still enjoying life and doing a few of the things I want to do.

“I’ve just had a lovely cruise round the Canary Islands, giving five lectures on football and meeting interesting people, so things are good.

“I suppose I am okay at that sort of thing as I’ve been teaching for so long and am used to standing up and talking.

“Yes, I miss the local radio work because I regularly watched Portsmouth, Southampton and Chelsea but I still go to all Pompey’s home games and saw their win in the UEFA Cup last week.”

The Thomases have lived down south for 26 years since he pitched up at Fratton Park as the last stop in a seven-club career that also took him from Burnley to QPR, Everton, Wolves, Vancouver Whitecaps and Middlesbrough.

He also won eight caps for England in the mid-1970s but regrets to say that his time in the West Midlands from 1979 to 1981 was not a happy one, although he played four of the games in Wolves’ triumphant 1979-80 League Cup run and appeared in the away leg of the UEFA Cup tie against Eindhoven the following season.

“I frequently seemed to be at odds with the coach, Richie Barker,” he recalls. “I always played in rubbers rather than boots and had my socks pulled down because I hated wearing shin pads.

In all-too-rare action for Wolves almost 30 years ago.

“Richie was repeatedly on at me and I was a bloody-minded sort, so we often didn’t get on. I didn’t know why people like Alf Ramsey and Don Revie had been okay with me doing that but he wasn’t - especially as someone as brilliant as Jimmy Greaves wore rubbers as well.

“I played 16 first-team matches for Wolves and probably a lot more in the reserves, so it isn’t a period of my career I look back on too fondly. Even so, there were some great lads there who I still ask about.”

So how did Thomas survive on a Burnley pitch that often cut up badly and while playing in an era when football was much more physical?

“I played on the wing, remember,” he adds. “It was the silly beggars in the middle who tended to get injured.”

John McAlle - a seasoned traveller but a lover of home life as well.

John McAlle has been busy retracing some of the steps he took as a well-travelled 1970s Wolves defender - with family visits to the Channel Islands.

Approaching 40 seasons on from when he played for a Wanderers side who won 9-0 in a friendly against a Jersey Select X1 in St Helier, McAlle has made six or seven hops off the mainland with his wife because they have a daughter living on the holiday isle.

And the trips have brought back memories of when Bill McGarry took his players to the same destination in January, 1972, at a time when they were already criss-crossing Europe in their run to the UEFA Cup final.

“I haven’t seen the ground we played at, although I feel I know Jersey quite well now, but I’ve noticed that the hotel we stayed at opposite the airport is now an old people’s home,” he said.

“And I’ve spotted the sand dunes where we were put through our paces one day after we had had a drink or two the night before and not felt up to the game of golf that Bill McGarry and Sammy Chung had lined up for us.

“They were both angry that we didn’t get up quickly enough and Sammy had us running for ages on the beach instead. I remember Danny Hegan having a bad cough and holding a handkerchief to his mouth while spluttering before throwing up.

“Sammy was normally the more lenient of the two but he was annoyed that day because he was made to miss his golf to work us while McGarry went off with his clubs!

“I scored one of the goals on that trip, if I remember right. I think most of us did other than Lofty (Phil Parkes). I’d certainly be disappointed if I didn’t score.”

Liverpool-born McAlle, 58 and living in retirement near Brewood, was interested to learn through www.wolvesheroes.com recently that Bobby Gould was spending the winter in New Zealand for the second successive year and helping coach his son Jonathan’s top-flight club Hawke’s Bay.

McAlle challenged at Molineux by Manchester City's Mike Channon.

That discovery, in turn, brought back images of Wolves’ mammoth 1972 tour of America and Australisia that had New Zealand as its middle leg.

“When we left New Zealand for Australia,” he added, ”we were all handed letters telling us there were jobs over there for us at the end of our careers if we wanted them, with some football coaching thrown in.

“None of us took the offers up but it’s a coincidence that Gouldy, who was probably at Albion at the time, has gone over there now to work in the game.”

* Editor’s note: Sorry Scouse - you didn’t score in Jersey! Wolves’ goals came from Jim McCalliog (4), Derek Dougan (2), Alan Sunderland, Kenny Hibbitt and John Richards.

In his Molineux pomp.

Steve Daley, once Britain’s most expensive footballer, is fast becoming one of the most sought-after players on the after-dinner circuit.

The former Wolves midfielder is taking a festive breather before resuming his strenuous round of engagements all over the country.

“Between November 1 and December 15, I did 35 lunches or dinners, sometimes two in a day,” he said.

“I’ve already got 40 dates in my diary for 2009, including two I’ve accepted today, and haven’t got a single Friday night free in March or May.

“There was one weekend when I went down to Cornwall on the Friday and drove up to Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the Saturday.

“Then I was in Birmingham at the start of this week, when I worked alongside Dean Saunders. But it’s great because I love doing it - and it’s good money.”

Daley, now 52, scored 43 goals in 244 games for Wolves from 1971 to 1979 before joining Manchester City for £1.437m in the same week that Andy Gray moved to Molineux from Aston Villa.

He was in the squad but not the team when Wolves won the League Cup in 1974 and had departed by the time they re-claimed the same trophy six years later.

“I tell stories rather than jokes and my delivery tends to be of a self-depracating nature,” he added. “Well, I can hardly talk about the things I won in my career, can I?

“In 2001, The Observer voted me the biggest waste of money in football, so that gives me plenty of material to put myself down over.

Not such a big success out of the gold and black.

“I still remember the sea of smiling faces and all the cheering at Man City - unfortunately, though, that was when I was leaving, not signing. 

“And I tell the story of how I played in one match in America against New York Cosmos when I looked down the line-ups beforehand and realised I was the only player I hadn’t heard of.”

Among the favourite 2008 ‘gigs’ for Daley, who also works three days a week as a salesman for Wolves Academy sponsors J Bishop & Company, have been a dinner to raise money for cancer-stricken former Molineux midfielder Ian Cartwright and a reunion of Manchester City’s 1969 FA Cup winning side.