No Acknowledgement For Hero Norman

There was a day early in the 1987-88 season when the Molineux PA man caused amusement by announcing a substitution ‘for our visitors Halifax Town’.

The laughter came because Wolves were actually playing Crewe that afternoon….Halifax’s visit had been three weeks earlier.

And you can imagine the ribbing Wolves’ players must have dished out amid more tanoy confusion a decade earlier during the club’s first season back in the top flight.

In a victory away to QPR on December 31, 1977, Mel Eves’ name wasn’t even on the team sheet but he was publicly hailed as being responsible for two of the side’s three goals.

The actual scoring hero, Norman Bell, was the man to miss out – over the public address system anyway – as an administrative mix-up caused by manager Sammy Chung left him short-changed.

The loudspeaker man, working from the team list he had been given, credited Eves with netting the team’s first and third goals in a 3-1 win that did much to ease their relegation worries.

The Sunday People cutting above told the story, with Chung quoted as saying he had correctly filled in the team sheet clubs have to submit to the match officials – but had made a mistake in a secondary one that went to the announcer.

So Eves, having worn the no 10 shirt in several previous matches, found himself receiving the public praise at the expense of the man who had not long come back into the side after an absence of a month and a half.

Steve Daley scored Wolves’ other goal in a game in which they took the lead but were pegged back to 1-1 at half-time before taking a decisive grip in the second half.

If Eves was the beneficiary at Loftus Road, he was the one on the receiving end of an identity problem a few months later.

His name was given as ‘Eaves’ in the People’s headline (left) of the 1-1 draw at Chelsea, where he struck a precious equaliser near the end for his first goal in senior football.