Funeral Day For Highly Popular Former Boss

Kenny Jackett never made it to a World Cup finals with Wales – half a dozen or so caps in qualifiers were as close as he went.

But, tenuous or even irrelevant as it may sound, there seems to be something extra sad that he succumbed in his cancer battle on the first day of a tournament he would so love to have watched.

June 11, the date of Mexico’s curtain-raiser victory over South Africa, was when we lost a man of whom so many at Wolves have spoken so glowingly in these last few weeks.

It was inevitably standing room only on the two floors of West Herts Crematorium’s north chapel yesterday at the funeral of the 64-year-old who played 31 times for his country.

John Barnes, who did go to World Cup finals (in Mexico and Italy), Luther Blissett, Tony Coton, Nigel Gibbs, Andy Hessenthaler, Alec Chamberlain and Robert Page were among the legends to pay tribute from the club with whom Kenny is most closely associated.

He played more than 420 first-team games for them, nearly all under the management of Graham Taylor, and stands sixth in their all-time record appearance-makers’ list.

He also had a 1996-97 spell as their manager, which helps explain why Steve Harrison and Rob Edwards were also present to raise a glass, as was his former Welsh colleague, Vinnie Jones.

An excellent Molineux insight into the inspiration behind Wolves’ immediate climb out of League One and back to Championship prominence remains visible at A tribute to Kenny Jackett | Club | News | Wolverhampton Wanderers FC and we are now grateful to Andrew French for capturing yesterday’s mood and appreciation.

“There was Kenny Jackett, the football man. And there was Ken Jackett, the family man,” the former Watford Observer reporter wrote. “He was a champion at both. That was how Joe Gallen, assistant to him for most of his managerial career, described him at his funeral…..

“….it was an occasion when Jackett’s love for, and devotion to, his family were highlighted. He fought illness during his final months, allowing him to greet his first grandchild and buy a first pair of shoes.”

The Observer piece told us that sons, Ryan and David, both paid emotional tributes, while his wife Sam thanked all the medical professionals who helped support her family during such a difficult time. And Ryan said: “Had my Dad been here, he would have been cringing at the attention, trying to slip off to go and watch a game somewhere.”

“For once,” French concluded, “Jackett had to be – and deservedly so – in the spotlight, the recipient of genuine, glowing words.”

At Wolves, Kenny, like Mick McCarthy, inherited a mess. Again, in the same mould, he immediately made full sense on day one in explaining how he planned to sort it out.

I recall being in a large group of media personnel cowering in the shade at Compton Park as Dean Saunders’s successor cut straight to the chase. The gist of his message was: “We are going to be favourites for promotion and there’s no getting away from that. We have to live up to it.” No spin, no mixed messages. Just clear, welcome ambition and confidence.

A few weeks later, Wolves were at Chesterfield for a friendly and my uncertainty over whether I should approach him again was soon laid to rest. He stood in the tunnel area watching the players warm up and proceded to chat to me and a good mate, Gwilym Machin, for 20 minutes. We had, by that point, already had a beer in Paul Cook’s office….pre-season games had never seemed such fun!

Certain members of the shamed squad he took on were so disconnected from the fans that, when Roger Johnson handed his shirt to a supporter at the end of the relegation-sealing defeat at Brighton, it was reportedly given straight back to him.

At the closest of quarters, Jackett had witnessed the work of Graham Taylor for a decade and showed he hadn’t had his eyes shut. A PR master-stroke in the summer of 2013 had the squad running through Wolverhampton city centre as a training exercise; a foundation for the sturdy bridges he was about to build.

The League One season skipped by merrily, too. There were some wobbles but Wolves basically stormed it, celebrating promotion on the way home from an early-kick-off win at Orient when afternoon results elsewhere dropped into place.

It was very much pitch invasion season. A friendly one at Crewe on the day the title was won was more acceptable than one or two of the nuisance variety in the spectacular 6-4 home win over Rotherham a couple of weeks before. But both occasions were a different world to the rancour and venom that poured down at the home game against Burnley 12 months earlier. It was some turn-around.

My own recollections of Kenny are of a sincere, serious, even intense individual. The light-heartedness he may have shown behind the scenes was not often on view in media conferences and there was little of the banter McCarthy and Mark McGhee were good at. But he was always patient, polite and interesting listening.

The momentum was maintained in 2014-15, when only goal difference denied Wolves a place in the play-offs, then came a drop-off in the last year of the Steve Morgan era. But if only Fosun had hung on to Kenny for a few months longer while they got to grips with English football rather than crashing head-first into mayhem with Walter Zenga!

It became much better for Wolves under Nuno, alas not for Jackett, who had spells at Rotherham, Portsmouth and Orient before an ‘upstairs’ role with Gillingham was shortened in November, 2024 by his illness.

Wolves and two of the clubs he served previously, Swansea and Millwall, sent wreaths to the service and there were appearances other than those by Edwards and Harrison, the latter a Molineux coach as well as a Watford veteran as a player, coach and manager.

Carl Ikeme and Kevin McDonald were there, too, and we will add further names if they are brought to our attention.

Other Watford players in attendance were Steve Palmer, Keith Millen, Richard Johnson and Lloyd Doyley, plus several Jackett helped in their formative years, such as Bruce Dyer, Tommy Smith and Paul Robinson.

“Always our brother,” said Luther Blissett on Facebook, “thank-you, Ken. RIEP.” Dyer added: “A wonderful send-off. Rest well.”

*Kenny’s World Cup qualifiers consisted of home and away games against Iceland (one won, one lost), home and away matches against Scotland (one won, one drawn) and home and away clashes with Spain, each of them won 3-0 by the host team.