Golden Reminiscences, Decades On

Jim Barron has become the latest former Wolves player to savour the hospitality of his one-time Molineux colleague Les Wilson.

We have written several stories extolling the pleasure Wilson takes in welcoming football friends to his home in Vancouver.

So he and wife Lois were more than happy to fulfill their familiar role after Barron contacted Wolves Heroes asking for contact details prior to a late-autumn trip to Canada’s west coast.

“We actually stayed in a hotel near the waterfront rather than at their house but thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with them,” Barron said today.

“We had lunch out with them and went and saw where they live as well as being taken to some of the tourist spots on their side of the city.

“Les is a really super guy, very warm and accommodating, and loves chatting about football, so the time flew by.

“We were only together at Wolves for a brief time in the mid-1960s and it was more than 40 years since we had met. There was a fair bit to catch up on but my partner Mel and I had fancied going to Vancouver for some time after I remembered what a lovely place it looked when I went there once to play a game.”

Wilson and Barron were in opposition in a Whitecaps v Connecticut Bicentennials fixture during the latter’s season in the States prior to linking up with John Barnwell at Peterborough.

He subsequently returned to Molineux and was assistant to Graham Hawkins when a back-from-the-brink club achieved an unlikely promotion back to the top flight in 1982-83.

A glance at the record books shows that all of Barron’s eight first-team appearances in Wolves’ goal came before Wilson made his debut in the side, away to Middlesbrough in 1965.

The two connected in 2012, though, when Wilson further lit up the 50th anniversary reunion of Wolves’ squad of 1962 FA Youth Cup finalists by linking up with the gathering by Skype.