Former Skipper Has His Eyes On Molineux

“I spent a lot of time in meetings with Graham Turner,” says Ally Robertson. “As captain, he saw me as an important link to the dressing room. I got on all right with him as I was a senior player by then.”

And the conversation moves on from there in a surprise direction: “After going close to getting the player-manager job at Exeter, I soon decided at Worcester and Cheltenham that management wasn’t going to be for me,” he adds. “But I would have made a good assistant manager.

“If someone like Bryan Robson, who I played with at the Albion for years, had taken me to one of the clubs he managed, I think I’d have done well.

“I knew how important it was for someone in that position to be loyal to the guy in charge but also to keep close to the dressing room and not tell tales about the players.”

The Scot has repeatedly praised Garry Pendrey for his work as Turner’s right-hand man in the late 1980s, even name-checking him as a key man in getting Steve Bull firing spectacularly.

He has also seen several of his Wolves team-mates carve out successful and lengthy careers in coaching and other backroom roles, notably Rob Kelly, Mike Stowell, Mark Venus and two men who followed the skipper out at Wembley in the 1988 Sherpa Van Trophy final, Keith Downing and Phil Robinson.

His own post-playing life has been a successful one in business and 90 minutes in his company in the hours leading up to Wolves v Fulham on Tuesday reminded me that, for an Albion veteran of over 18 years and more than 625 games, he very much has a soft spot for this part of the patch, too.

Certainly, he would love to be back at Molineux soon in one match-day guise or another. 

“I had hoped there might be some kind of Sherpa Van Trophy reunion when Wolves played Burnley at the start of the season but it was in the Carabao Cup, so there probably wasn’t much time to organise anything,” he added.

“I’ve done the corporate rooms in the past, as I do regularly at Albion, went on the supporters’ coaches to Manchester City v Wolves a few years back and had one of my book-signing events at Molineux.

“I know they also have the former players’ golf day there but I haven’t played in the Albion one for a few years because of my knees and back and it kills me to watch my mates playing, to be honest.”

The same Dudley coffee shop in which Robertson and I met had a visit from another former Wolves player on the same day – Nigel Quashie, the ex-Scottish international midfielder who played three first-team games on loan for Mick McCarthy’s promotion winners in 2009.

Quashie’s son, Brayden Clarke, a defender who spent several years in the Wolves academy system, played for Arsenal last night in their FA Youth Cup quarter-final defeat at home to Manchester United. He has frequently represented Wales at under-16 and under-17 level.