Pals Pleased To Return To The Dug-Out

They were dressing-room mates at Wolves more than 35 years ago and then backroom colleagues at Leicester for several seasons.

Now, Rob Kelly and Mike Stowell have returned to work in quick succession at opposite ends of the country after beginning to wonder whether their time in the dug-out was drawing towards a close.

Both have turned 60 in recent months and had had substantial spells out of the professional game in the twilight of long coaching careers.

But now Kelly has been taken on for the second time by Barrow and Stowell has this week been employed as goalkeeper coach at Plymouth following Daryl Flahavan’s move to Sheffield Wednesday.

Kelly – a late-1980s midfielder at Wolves and then a Molineux coach under both Graham Turner and Graham Taylor – was installed as assistant manager to David Dunn at the northern outpost in September, 2020.

He was twice subsequently upgraded to the role of caretaker manager and widely praised for leading the club to safety in their first season back in the Football League.

He subsequently declined the offer of the boss’s job on a permanent basis, though, and moved on to Wigan, Rotherham and Aarhus before recently being summoned back as a coach at Holker Street by manager Andrew Whing.

And this website had an insight into his popularity at the club when we visited Holker Street 15 months ago for a pre-season friendly and noticed that a Kelly’s Heroes banner is permanently displayed there in recognition of his excellent work.

By coincidence, the Brummie’s final game as manager of Leicester – the highest-profile of the many off-field roles he has had – was a 3-0 Championship defeat away to the club Stowell linked up with on Tuesday.

Since being part of Robbie Keane’s backroom staff when Maccabi Tel Aviv achieved a league and cup double in Israel in 2023-24, the record-breaking former Wolves keeper had been working among the coaches at Bristol City Women, where his daughter is an up-and-coming keeper.

His first game with 18th-placed Argyle is at home to Wimbledon on Saturday, with a Devon derby at Exeter coming up the following Thursday and beyond that a November 1 FA Cup trip to Wycombe, where, in January 2001, he made the last of his 440 Wolves starts in League and cups.

Stowell, who played only once for Wolves at Plymouth (a 1-0 second-tier defeat in November, 1991), is known to Home Park boss Tom Cleverley as a result of the former England international midfielder’s successful loan spell at Leicester in 2009.

Stowell lives in the Bristol area and is therefore reasonably placed for work near the Devon/Cornwall border.