Wembley Scorers’ New Link To Supporters

For years, they were next to each other on the team sheet, wearing shirt numbers 10 and 11.

Now best mates Andy Mutch and Robbie Dennison are side by side at the microphone, sharing their thoughts from Wolves’ revivalist years for the benefit of those among us still soaking up all the memories like sponges.

This is new ground for former Molineux favourites. Their contemporaries and predecessors have frequently appeared on platforms like this but, apart from the one featuring Colin Lee and Dean Edwards, have not launched such an enterprise of their own.

The idea for Mutchy & Denno came from Robbie himself, some time after they and former team-mates had appeared in the city in the summer as part of Steve Bull’s 60th birthday celebrations.

“You two were bouncing off each other…it flowed,” said Sky Sports’ Johnny Phillips about their appearance on stage at the Wulfrun Hall. He’s at their side in this venture, too, and it’s clearly no hardship. “Your team was my team,” he told them. “I was a boy and Wolves fan of the 80s.”

Hard, honest graft was one of the virtues of the Graham Turner team in which Dennison and Mutch were colleagues for more than six years. Now they are covering a wide range of talking points from their past rather than covering that expansive, council-owned and often boggy Molineux pitch.

The ‘Come On Me Babbies’ fan (and the one who fell through the roof at Scarborough) have a mention, so, too, the agony of Chorley, the leadership qualities of Alistair Robertson and the manner of the duo’s recruitment by Wolves. Because they are footballers, the mickey-taking is good as well.

Mutch referred to being able to pick himself up after rejection by Everton and feeling lucky that Wolves were so poor in the mid-1980s that he had the chance to play first-team football.

“We (Southport) played Kidderminster and drew, then had the replay at their place,” he said. “Sammy Chapman was there. We were battered on a frozen pitch and I didn’t do much but I did score and they came for me. It was a huge fee…£8,000 plus £2,000 in add-ons! The offer from Sammy was a ‘take it or leave it’ but I’m forever grateful to him.

“I was amazed to be on a pitch with Geoff Palmer, who I am now friends with and who had played alongside Willie Carr, Kenny Hibbitt, Steve Daley and John Richards in a team of legends in the 1970s.

“We started to put a bit of pride back in the club and it was great for us to be part of that team.

“But Chorley killed me. They were quite local to me and I knew their lads. It was an absolute embarrassment. Their attitude compared with ours was top of the class and bottom of the class. They are the bare facts as to what happened.”

Dennison, who was signed from Albion in March, 1987, shared with Bull, Andy Thompson and Robertson the feeling of being considered surplus to requirements at The Hawthorns and relates on tape what he was told by Ron Saunders.

“On deadline day at about 2pm, he said: ‘Wednesbury want you’. I said: ‘Sheffield Wednesbury?’ He said: ‘Get yourself across there and don’t come back’.

“Carlton Palmer was sat outside….he was nosey like that. I had to ask him how to get to Wolverhampton and he said he’d drive me. So I had a meeting and tried to get another £50 a week but it wasn’t about money at that stage. I just wanted to play games.

“Ron Saunders tried to send me back to Northern Ireland to Portadown or Linfield but I wanted to stay and prove myself.”

Dennison recalled physio Paul Darby taking a bright red tracksuit out of the wrapper and handing it to him for his first day’s training. The recollection leads to part of the banter between the two….

”It was the only time you stood out in training”…..1-0 to Mutchy. “That cone tackled you once.”  

Having these two in the same studio – the one used by WCR in Mander House – and not talking about the two Wembley visits of 1988 would be the broadcaster’s equivalent of missing an open goal. They shared all the goals there across the two games after all.

A month or so before the free-kick gem that saw off Burnley, Dennison hit a beauty in open play when League champions Everton provided the opposition to Turner’s men in a game in a special tournament marking the Football League’s centenary.

Wolves might well have gone through but for some mishaps in the penalty shoot-out. “I beat Neville Southall from 30 yards and you couldn’t beat him from 12!” Robbie pointed out. That makes it 1-1, then!

Mutch added: “Wembley was a second home to Liverpool at that time but to be sitting on the coach going down Wembley Way and knowing you’re going to play there…..great days, never forgotten.”

The two Sherpa Van Trophy final marksmen agreed how well Wolves looked after the players and their families across that memorable weekend.

The highlight of it was the trophy being presented by Bill Slater and Jimmy McIlroy to Robertson, about whom Dennison said: “Ally had done something in the game, we were trying to do something. He was a leader, on the pitch and socially.”

Right, that’s an insight into episode one Mutchy & Denno with Johnny Phillips – Podcast – Apple Podcasts. Number two has already been recorded and we look forward to tuning in. It’s great knockabout stuff reflecting on an era we can hardly get enough of.