One Of The Very Best

A Full House For The Last Goodbye

“Being a friend of Phil Parkes was an honour. I feel privileged to have known him.” The words were spoken by West Midlands musician Kenny Craig but could have come from any of the hundreds of guests in St Peter’s Collegiate Church.

The Godfather to the Parkes’s son, Greg, also spoke in 2010 at wife Maureen’s funeral and was one of those invited out to Vancouver to spend time with the family during their Whitecaps years. They were all very close.

“He was kind, generous, friendly, caring and always respected by his fellow man, as the turn-out today shows,” a packed congregation was told. They also heard how this former West Midlands League player had been enthralled by the invitation he received from coach Tony Waiters, through Lofty, to join in a training session on Canada’s west coast with Alan Ball, Willie Johnston, Bruce Grobbelaar, Trevor Whymark and others. 

The Whitecaps’ theme tune, White Is The Colour, was chosen as the entrance music to yesterday’s service, which ended, more predictably, with Hi Ho Silver Lining.

In between came more of the memories and stories which made the 79-year-old so loved in these parts. 

Norman Bell and Derek Parkin outside the church.

The football perspective was largely given by the Wolves FPA’s Richard Green, who recalled childhood days spent scrambling under a fence at the club’s old training ground at Castlecroft to catch valuable glimpses of the players.

“We were allowed to watch as long as we stayed behind the goal and that’s where I first met Lofty,” he said. “He was huge and seemed to fill the goal.

“He was a top keeper, an imposing figure and a powerful presence of a man, often in a red jersey on match-days.”

Richard spoke of a certain verbal exchange of the not-so-friendly variety with Fabio Capello after the first-leg draw between Juventus and Wolves in Turin in the quarter-final of the 1971-72 UEFA Cup. He also reminded us of the fact the keeper, as a 19-year-old, saved a penalty on his Wolves debut – the 3-2 home win over Preston in November, 1966 – and stressed his devotion to duty by revealing he once faced Bristol Rovers with a broken finger, lined up against Burnley when nursing a broken toe and took on Chelsea with a temperature of 104.

He also covered the long post-football decades, adding: “With the help of their sons, Greg and Dean, Lofty continued to raise vital funds for the NHS after losing Maureen.

“He did lots in the community and, just before his fall in April last year, he was talking to fans in the museum and also accompanying Steve Daley at a local care home to congratulate one of the residents on a big birthday. They were quite a double act and nobody at the home wanted them to leave.

“Lofty was always the first to arrive and the last to leave and great company. He was very, very special.”

Among the former Wolves players present yesterday were Norman Bell, George Berry, Colin Brazier, Steve Bull, Daley, Mel Eves, Gerry Farrell, Don Gardner, Bob Hazell, Kenny Hibbitt, Carl Ikeme, Steve Kindon, Peter Knowles, Phil Nicholls, Gerry O’Hara, Geoff Palmer, Derek Parkin, Barry Powell, Jon Purdie, John Richards, Gerry Taylor and Paul Walker,  

Of those more associated with Albion, Alistair Robertson, Micky Fudge and Joe Mayo put in appearances and, as well as present-day Wolves employees, we saw Robert Plant, Richard Skirrow, Russell Jones and various members of the families of Dave Wagstaffe, Gary Pierce, Bobby Thomson and Terry Wharton.

Confirmation of how easy Lofty was to rub along with came from entrepreneur Steve Saul, who said in his address: “I joined Fordhouses Cricket Club in the mid-1980s and remember seeng him there for the first time. I thought: I can’t talk to him….he’s one of my heroes.

“But he was just one of the lads and went on to captain the second and third teams and volunteered for umpire duties as well.

A later-in-the-day photo of (from left) Norman Bell, Derek Parkin, Steve Kindon, John Richards, Phil Nicholls, Kenny Hibbitt and Civic Centre staff members.

“When I organised a They Wore The Shirt dinner with Steve Plant in his honour, Bruce Grobbelaar came and we asked him what we owed him in expenses. He replied: ‘Nothing, I’d do anything for Phil Parkes.’

“Everybody in Wolverhampton seemed to know Lofty and nobody had a bad word to say about him.”

The hearse stopped in front of a small audience at Molineux on its way to the church and a montage of photos and film clips was shown near the end of the service, which also included a reading by Wolves historian Peter Crump.