Molineux – But Not As We Know It

Imagine, next time you attend a Wolves home game, a main stand that backs on to Waterloo Road but has no roof.

Spectators in seats on that traditional showpiece side of the ground will be open to the elements until a cover can be financed and added. But the directors will be spared. They will be in the fully protected stand opposite.

Does this sound like a proposal from the earliest days of Molineux well over 100 years ago? A plan devised when attendances were relatively small and venues were more ramshackle? Think again….it was one thought up during the Graham Turner-Steve Bull era.

Yes, a late-1980s scheme submitted by the Gallaghers suggested the ticket office and club shop also be redeveloped so as to be facing the main thoroughfare that still runs from in front of the stadium’s long-time main entrance to the town centre.

Another startling feature of the proposal was that new players’ facilities – presumably dressing-rooms, physio quarters and work-out areas – were to be built into the end of the John Ireland Stand, near where the Asda superstore is. 

Wolves Heroes have recently seen a letter from March 6, 1989, written by Tony Gallagher on behalf of the club’s owners to Wolverhampton Council chief executive MT Lyons.

At a time when the club were motoring towards a second successive lower-division title success, the correspondence outlined the plans for redeveloping the ground, which was said to be ‘very unsatisfactory’. The reasons given for this uncomplimentary description were the pitch being so far from the John Ireland Stand and the fact that two sides of the stadium had remained closed for four years.

“In order to have a secure future, it’s important Wolverhampton Wanderers have better facilities,” the letter read. “It could be argued that your upkeep and maintenance (of the ground) is a liability/burden on the ratepayer. Obviously, if we took the stadium over, it would be beneficial to the local authority. We would like to open negotiations with you immediately.”

The Gallaghers’ plans were aimed at developing a 30,000-capacity stadium without disrupting the fixture schedule.

They proposed that a new stand on the long-condemned Waterloo Road should initially be built without a roof but with the aim of adding one at a later stage.

Office and director facilities were earmarked to go in the John Ireland (now Steve Bull) Stand and there were plans to ‘reuse’ two of the floodlight pylons on the Waterloo Road side and locate lamps along the front edge of the giant stand opposite.

As we now know, the ground redevelopment took a whole different course when it began at the orders of Sir Jack Hayward in the early 1990s.

He oversaw the flattening and rebuilding of three sides of Molineux and even modernised and spruced up the surviving John Ireland Stand by replacing its red seats with gold ones.

The Gallaghers were actually rugby followers more than football fans but pumped vital money into the club from 1986 on the understanding that it was purely a business decision, not a passion or dream.

After the nightmare of the Bhatti era, though, their work in keeping Wolves afloat in the darkest of times should not be overlooked. In the end, they didn’t need to see through any of their stadium plans but started constructing Asda in July, 1989. Receiving planning permission for that was the golden ticket in their eyes when they bought the club.

The family, having previously built the Merry Hill shopping complex near Brierley Hill town centre, purchased land from Wolverhampton Council in the so-called ‘Molineux Triangle’ in order to develop a superstore. Their huge construction radically changed the landscape behind and across from the crumbling North Bank into what we know it as today.

Other documents in the bundle of little-seen paperwork that we have had access to include a report from quantity surveyors Bucknall Austin in December, 1985. In that, we read of discussions over a ‘major remodelling’ of the ground, which was to include 30,000 seats and a tartan all-weather running track round the perimeter.

And a letter from Councillor Ray Harding to chief executive Norman Perry in August, 1990 spoke of Molineux as a possible answer to the British Speedway Promoters Association’s search for a national venue with a 30,000 capacity. He proposed that speedway be considered as an additional use for the ground.

“I believe that the days when soccer grounds can be used for one function only have long since passed,” Councillor Harding wrote. “Most of the grounds on which World Cup matches were played (in Italia 90) were, at the minimum, dual-use grounds, in many cases with the the use of athletics.”

A study brief from the council in April, 1990 read: “The council bought the ground from the Receiver in 1986. The primary consideration was to ensure the continuation of League football but it also wanted to bring about the refurbishment of the stadium for a range of sporting activities.”