This One’s On Norman
A Goal Back – For Popular Winger
Norman Deeley – maybe one goal better off than we thought.
A small piece of Wolverhampton Wanderers history may shortly be rewritten in favour of home-grown winger Norman Deeley.
The Wednesbury-born hero of the 1960 FA Cup final already has a prominent place in Molineux history with his goal tally for the club in League and cup matches standing at 75.
But that total might be about to click on to 76 thanks to the diligent checking of football statisticians in Manchester and on this patch.
Close attention is being paid to one of the goals by which Wolves beat Manchester United 2-1 in a First Division game watched by more than 38,000 on February, 1961.
The Wolves Complete Record books to which we tend to turn for reference on these matters have Ron Flowers and Shay Brennan (own goal) down as the scorers for Stan Cullis’ side.
Approaching 60 years on, though, questions are being asked as to whether that information is correct – and former Express & Star sports editor Steve Gordos is playing a part in the sorting-out process.
“I had an email from Tony Williams at the English National Football Archive, querying a goal credited as a Shay Brennan own goal,” said the author of many Wolves books.
“He wondered if it should be a Norman Deeley goal and, as I still have my scrapbooks for that season, I found the Sporting Star report by Phil Morgan and it seems pretty clear it should have been one for Norman. There was no suggestion of Brennan being involved.
“The bottom line is that I reckon Norman should have 76 Wolves goals to his name, rather than 75, but the ENFA apparently have about 1,500 queries over scorers going back to the start of League football!”
Various of those question marks relate to other matches from Wolves’ past, so we might be revisiting this subject in the coming months.
No mention of a defender’s intervention.
A look at the Goal Aces section of this website shows that Deeley is the 19th highest scorer in Molineux history and will be three behind 18th-placed Terry Wharton even if he is belatedly awarded this extra goal, despatched by United’s amateur keeper Mike Pinner.
The effort against United will also make him the club’s fourth top marksman for 1960-61 – a campaign in which he currently stands alongside Cliff Durandt on eight goals, behind Ted Farmer (28), Jimmy Murray (25) and Peter Broadbent (14).
