Wearside Heroes Who Also Shone In Wolverhampton

Do you ever pick up books in libraries or stores and flick to the back to see what references there might be to Wolves players or coaches?

Go through Kevin Phillips’ 1999 book, Second Time Around, and a whole host of mentions of Molineux personnel spring out from the pages.

The publication was dedicated to the striker’s extraordinary success in the Sunderland side who narrowly missed out on a Premier League place at the 1998 play-off final and then made sure in style 12 months later.

He wouldn’t win any popularity contests round Molineux, thanks largely to the fact he scored so heavily against Wolves for his different clubs, but those of us down here will be fascinated by how many Wearside team-mates he had who later moved to these parts.

Well under 20 players had appeared for both clubs in the first 122 years of the Wolves story but, remarkably, four of Phillips’ colleagues at the Stadium of Light subsequently moved to Molineux.

He described Paul Butler – ‘a big, strapping centre-half, an outstanding defender, a rock’ – as one of the card game kings along with Niall Quinn, Andy Melville, Michael Bridges and Peter Reid’s no 2, Bobby Saxton, who spent time at Wolves as a youngster.

Mickey Gray, who spent time in this parish during the Mick McCarthy era, was reportedly briefly in charge of the entertainment on Sunderland’s long coach journeys. He once had to pick up the bill for a squad night out at an Italian restaurant on the sea-front in lieu of being fined for a sending-off.

Phillips called the full-back ‘super-fit’ and spoke at length about him after the infamous penalty miss in the Wembley shoot-out that sent Charlton up rather than the Wearsiders. “It was impossible to lift Mickey’s head from the turf,” he wrote. “As a local lad with red and white coursing through his veins, it must have hurt him even more. In the dressing room, he sat in the corner insonsolable.”

Jody Craddock is name-checked both as one of Phillips’ colleagues in the Washington Moat House Hotel after they first signed and as the exponent of a surprise practical joke. 

And Alex Rae, not surprisingly, is referred to as ‘inspirational’ and as one of the Sunderland team-mates who made it to Phillips’ late-1990s wedding in Stevenage.

‘Second Time Around’ also offers an interesting take on transfer activity. Phillips was apparently taken to the north-east from Watford after Peter Reid had considered an alternative swoop on Vicarage Road for David Connolly – the striker Wolves signed during Mark McGhee’s spell in charge. 

And, on a similar theme, the author might have gone to Ipswich instead of to Wearside but the East Anglians pulled out of a deal as they were in the process of signing Mark Venus from Wolves in part-exchange for Steve Sedgley.

So what does Phillips say about opponents, especially those in gold and black. Of Keith Curle, he wrote: “I was really wound up that day (the afternoon of a 1-1 Molineux draw early in 1998-99, when the striker scored an undeserved late equaliser).

“He was really getting to me. He’s big and hard, which I can handle, but he’s dirty with it, too. There were times when an elbow went into my back or my shirt was being pulled, so it was brilliant when the goal went in. I just wanted to go up to Curle and shout: ‘Have some of that’.”

But the hard-back book (published by CollinsWillow) is much more praising of two men who feature on the long list of former Wolves managers.

On the early pages, Graham Taylor is said to have told Phillips soon after he returned to the hot seat at Watford that he was a good player who could go to the top if he listened to advice. The ex-England boss was less impressed when the young star declined a new contract and made it clear he wished to leave. And Glenn Hoddle is named as the man to have given Phillips his first international chance, via a B game in 1998.

The forward and Michael Gray were later named together in the senior England side for the first time after Kevin Keegan had taken over.