Idolised Striker Seeks To Gatecrash Elite Group

Could Raul Jimenez be about to do what only Bryn Jones, Sammy Smyth and Hugh Curran have so far managed to do?

The question is slighty loaded so as to cover us while we – and perhaps others – consult the record books in the countdown to England’s round-of-16 clash with the co-hosts in Mexico City in the next 48 hours.

We are grateful to Wolves Heroes follower John Price for kindly bringing to our door the question of how many players have scored against England while on the Molineux payroll.

Well, Smyth did just that at Maine Road, Manchester in November, 1949, six months after he hit a wonder goal against Leicester at Wembley in the FA Cup final.

The international ‘strike’ was nothing like as meaningful, though – his side crashed to a 9-2 defeat against opponents captained by his Molineux skipper, Billy Wright.

Jones’s big moment had come, of all places, in Wolverhampton. He hit the decider in Wales’s 2-1 win here on February 5, 1936, a couple of years before his sensational British-record-fee departure to Arsenal.  

And Curran delivered for Scotland at Wembley in May, 1971 when he netted the visitors’ only goal in a 3-1 Home International Championship defeat at Wembley.

But how many others have there been that we are struggling to recall? Or have there been any others at all?

Jim McCalliog was still a Sheffield Wednesday player and two years away from moving to Molineux when he scored in the 3-2 Wembley defeat of England that Scots rather grandly hail as effectively having made them world champions!

And David Clements, by then a Coventry player after an apprenticeship spent at Molineux, scored for Northern Ireland at Goodison Park in the 2-1 defeat by England that brought John Richards his only senior cap.

There are other interesting links along these lines. Ted Vizard, later to manage Wolves, scored his only goal in 22 Welsh appearances when part of the side who famously beat England 2-1 at Blackburn in March, 1924. 

Much more recently, Leigh Griffiths – by then mid-way through his highly prolific Celtic stay – helped himself to a late brace before Harry Kane’s last-gasp free-kick ensured a 2-2 draw between the old foes at Hampden Park and we are grateful to John Lalley for reminding us that David Kelly scored against England for the Republic of Ireland in Dublin in 1995, only for the game to be subsequently abandoned because of rioting.

There are other familiar Wolves names who scored against England before or after their time at Molineux but we throw the matter out to our readers as we return to the question that kicked off this article…

Would Wolves’ recently-resigned Mexican hero be joining what currently appears to be a highly elite group of three if he nets against Thomas Tuchel’s men this weekend?