A Wembley Reminder

Wednesday, August 29: Travelled to a hotel near Manchester Airport to interview Mike Summerbee for the highly evocative Backpass magazine – and found Wolves ‘angles’ spilling out of our chat. Issue 25, which is out soon, will reveal more but he said much about his personal build-up and fall-out from Wolves’ Second Division home game against Manchester City in 1965 and surprised me with the reminder that he had been Ron Saunders’s captain for the 1974 League Cup final.

Sunday, September 2: How about this for some Molineux trivia? In the starting line-up at Cardiff today were two players whose surnames end in ‘O’ – Bakary Sako and Slawomir Peszko. Steve Gordos, an authority on such matters, emailed me on the subject and said: “Before these two, I reckon there have been only five in Wolves’ 135-year history – Botto in the 1930s, Munro, Rosario, Okoronkwo and Mouyokoulo.” Continuing the name game, I see Paul Cook still has Molineux on his lips. Or Molyneux to be exact. The former Port Vale player has recently made his debut for an Accrington Stanley side who are flying high in League Two.

Friday, September 7: What are the chances of this happening? In the space of a few minutes while walking through the centre of Wolverhampton today, I bumped into Peter Knowles (outside the Molineux Hotel), the king of cycling commentary Hugh Porter, former Wolves youngster JJ Melligan, who has been playing in the last year for Solihull Moors, and early 1960s Molineux amateur John Southall.

Monday, September 10: Interviewed Ade Akinbiyi this afternoon for the programme for the forthcoming meeting of two of his old clubs (Wolves and Leicester) and had a shock. He told me he has been living for the last ten years two or three villages away from us near the Staffordshire/Shropshire border.

Tuesday, September 11: Better late than never! Received some lovely photos today of proud dad Bernard Shaw giving away his daughter Hannah at her wedding some months ago. Hard work clearly runs in the family. Hannah helps runs a thriving photography business with her brother Matthew which made them extremely busy while the Olympic torch was on its pre-Games relay. see www.dreambooth.co.uk for further details.

Friday, September 14: Cycling is clearly helping revive the fashions footballers followed more than 40 years ago. Looking at the programme for the Wolves v Barnsley programme a few weeks ago, Steve Daley considered the choice of the ‘then’ photo of him a shade unflattering and commented that it gave him a Bradley Wiggins look. John Richards made exactly the same comparison today when he read a Wolves Heroes piece that featured him.

Friday, September 21: My travels ensure that I bump into Graham Taylor once or twice a season in press boxes. This afternoon, he kindly returned a call and spoke fondly of Graham Hughes, about whom I’ve been asked to write a piece in the programme for the Wolves v Sheffield Wednesday game. “The sort of loyal, sincere man every club needs,” was the gist of his tribute.