Skipper Supreme Who Led By Example

By David Instone

‘Shivery’ was how Mike Bailey described his proudest moment at Wolves – that point in time when he raised the League Cup aloft to the celebrating masses at the gold and black end of Wembley.

He used the word in the presence of the camera crew filming the interview I was conducting at his golf club in South London for the Official History of Wolves dvd.

To be honest, the skipper was a bit grumpy that day. He had agreed willingly enough to be filmed and was keen to be part of this permanent record of the club’s often glorious past.

He spoke fully, too, but there were interruptions. The cameraman kept hearing background noises through his headphones that weren’t audible to the rest of us and, two or three times, asked for questions or answers to be repeated.

Mike obliged but was a little irritated. We were on his patch and things weren’t exactly going like clockwork. They certainly weren’t purring along in the style to which we were accustomed from the Wolves side that had him at its very heart for over ten years.

Three decades on from his Molineux departure, he still possessed an aura and authority. We saw it again around the same time when he berated Phil Parkes at a dinner at the stadium for being photographed with a drink in his hand. Wolves folk never stopped looking up to him….Lofty listened, apologised and put his pint down before the next photo was taken.

Parkes was one of those who stayed in phone contact with the man who arrived from Charlton in February, 1966 and reeled off 436 League and cup appearances for the club before going off first to America and then into a few coaching and managerial posts.

It was some stay! In his first full season, which was possibly his very best for Wolves, he played the first 47 games in inspiring the winning of promotion with three matches to go, his influence never better exemplified than at Portsmouth in the February. There, in front of the Match of the Day cameras, his driving performance, complete with a goal, helped turn a 2-0 half-time deficit into a 3-2 victory. 

Bailey was named Midlands Player of the Year that spring but missed the final fixture, at Crystal Palace, and the team’s crashing 4-1 defeat in his injury-enforced absence meant the Second Division title went to Coventry instead.

He recovered to lead Wolves to success in that summer’s American tournament and picked up where he left off with three goals in the first four games back in Division One, including one at Fulham on the opening afternoon. A top-flight star was born.

Bailey was already well known to London audiences from his long stay at Charlton, where he became club captain and where a contribution of more than 150 appearances built the foundation for him to win his two England caps – in a 10-0 rout of America in New York and in a more routine victory over Wales at Wembley, both in 1964.

But it rankles, just as it does when reflecting on the talents of Kenny Hibbitt, Derek Parkin, Dave Wagstaffe and John Richards, that England didn’t come calling much more often. After all, were there really any better exponents of the old no 4 art?

Bailey was deemed good enough to go on England’s trip to Brazil in the summer of 1965 for games against the hosts, Argentina and Portugal and was named in more squads after 1966. But Sir Alf remained loyal to his World Cup winners.

A big pity, that. Those lions would have looked as good as the wolf head on his expanded shirt. Well, ‘barrel-chested’ is the tag most frequently used to describe his physique. And, in gold or white, his forceful, relentless style powered team-mates on in countless battles.

While still at Charlton, Bailey had to overcome a broken leg suffered at Middlesbrough before a goal in a friendly win over Wolves at The Valley brought him more on to the Molineux radar. Then he lined up for the Londoners in a 2-2 Division Two draw at Wolves in November, 1965 – an occasion he marked by scoring again as well as winning a penalty that Ron Saunders missed.

More significantly, in the greater scheme of things, Bailey’s England under-23 room-mate, Ernie Hunt, invited him into the home dressing-room before the game. On seeing him sat there, manager Ronnie Allen said: “How would you fancy playing with these lads?” The seed was sewn.

He duly arrived three months later in a £40,000 deal deep into the club’s first season at the second level for more than 30 years. It’s just as well chairman John Ireland forced him into a quick decision because Tottenham, the club Mike’s dad supported, were interested, too.

There was just time before signing for a phone chat with wife Barbara, whose agreement to moving north was fuelled partly by the fact she worked for the Bank of England and could transfer to a branch in Birmingham.

The respect for Bailey at The Valley was illustrated when both manager Bob Stokoe and chairman Michael Gliksten wrote to congratulate him after he had led Wolves to promotion. All of which must have made Norwich think they had had a wonderful talent snatched from under their noses.

We posted a few days ago about Fred Kemp coming to the West Midlands from an unlikely source. Mike’s accent was stronger and even less familiar, courtesy of his upbringing in Great Yarmouth.

His birth in the Cambridgeshire town of Wisbech was purely because the family were evacuated there during the war. His true roots were in Norfolk, from where his school sent six other lads into professional football in quick succession, including Arsenal defender Peter Simpson and Norwich’s Dave Stringer.

None impressed more than Bailey. Within 12 months of arriving at Wolves, he had succeeded Ron Flowers as captain and was emerging as a First Division powerhouse.

Remember that mud-spattered image from a home clash with Norwich? It spoke a thousand words. Truly inspirational! He was seriously hard but fair with it and widely regarded by his team-mates as the best Wolves captain since the 1950s glory days. Not, as John Lalley reminded us in the Express & Star, that we should forget what a fine player he was per se, regardless of whether or not he led the team out.

Across four years starting with his first full Molineux campaign, Bailey averaged more than 42 games a season and, when his appearance tally dropped off substantially in 1971-72 because of an injury suffered in the FA Cup third round against Leicester, a possible title challenge melted away and turned into a final placing of ninth.

It was a crying shame that he was sidelined for the last three rounds of that season’s UEFA Cup, although Bill McGarry valued his presence highly enough to have him in the dug-out for the away first leg of the quarter-final against Juventus.

Bailey was on record as saying his relationship with the manager was far from warm but how Wolves and Bill could have done with more of their skipper in the final against Tottenham than the 29-minute second-leg substitute’s cameo that he was fit for. 

His increasingly problematic fitness hurt Wolves again the season after. Cup third-round afternoon did for him once more and the three months of football he missed left him ready for only a walk-on part in the semi-final against Leeds. Again, Wolves succumbed by the odd goal and were left wondering whether their long-term captain might have made the difference.

Happily, his contribution was back up to the 40-game mark for his final three seasons at Molineux and the richly deserved prize came along in the first of those. It was the small matter of 52 and a half years ago but the memories still burn bright. What a day!

It was all the sweeter because it came just in time for Mike, Doog and Waggy. The trio’s Molineux careers were in the twilight phase as Wolves at last got their hands on some deserved and overdue silverware.

By now, the team were in decline and the skipper, well into his 30s, was not the force he had been come the time the cup defence was launched – and immediately crushed. 

As readers of the 1969 ‘Molinews’ programme may remember, Mike was always an enthusiastic traveller. His diary from Wolves’ second winning trip to the United States in three summers underlined his liking for a country on which he set his sights during the club’s promotion-winning 1976-77 Second Division campaign.

A few months after almost 20,000 had turned up for his testimonial – a 3-0 win over Albion in which Bobby Moore and the two-goal George Best turned out – he linked up with former Birmingham manager Freddie Goodwin as player-coach of Minnesota Kicks.

Among the likes of Charlie George, Ade Coker, Stan Cummins and Alan Merrick, he spent two seasons in the North American Soccer League before returning home to try his hand as boss of Hereford.

There, for the third time, he found himself alongside Bobby Gould after recruiting him as player-coach. The former Molineux team-mates remained good friends, so much so that they indulged for decades in the practice of keeping the same Christmas card ‘alive’, taking turns to send it to the other, then waiting for it to come back 12 months later.

Bailey retraced old steps by returning to Charlton as manager in 1979-80 and led them to promotion from the Third Division the following season before switching to Brighton. In two seasons at the Goldstone Ground, he led the club to what was their highest ever League position to that point.

Inevitably, Bailey was attracted by the possibility of managing Wolves and was interviewed by Derek Dougan and general manager Eric Woodward in a John Ireland Stand hospitality box in 1984, only for the job to go instead to Tommy Docherty. It didn’t prove an inspired appointment. The side finished rock bottom of Division Two ten months later, 39 points and 16 places behind a Brighton team initially taken on by Jimmy Melia after Mike was sacked half-way through the Seagulls’ relegation season.

We mentioned the Baileys’ travelling itch….off to the sun they went when Crete-based OFI came calling in the mid-1980s. Thereafter came a spell as reserve team coach and talent-spotter with Jim Smith’s Portsmouth, the manager post at Leatherhead and various scouting stints.

He was in that sort of role with Everton when I bumped into him at the Barnet v Wolves League Cup tie in 1998 and subsequently served Dave Jones likewise at Molineux before deciding he was done with the game.

Mike was inducted to Wolves’ hall of fame in 2010 and now would be a good time for those who haven’t read the 2015 book he wrote with Clive Corbett, The Valley Wanderer, to do so.

And as if we needed any reminder of the affection in which he was held in these parts, the minute’s applause before this afternoon’s victory over Stoke provided it.