About To Show On TV…..Ron With His Medal

Our delight in helping find and reward Ron Stockin for his role in Wolves’ first League Championship triumph has increased thanks to recognition from BBC TV.

Midlands Today were sufficiently impressed by the newly-decorated First Division title winner’s story on Wolves Heroes to decide to set about following it up themselves – and are planning to broadcast in the coming days.

The cameras went on Tuesday to the care home in West Bromwich where Ron is resident and then dropped by at Molineux for further filming before rounding off the feature through a Zoom interview with this site’s co-owner David Instone.

We look forward to seeing the finished item because this lengthy but extremely satisfying episode is right up there among the stories and events we are most proud about during our 13 years in cyberspace.

The success in tracing a man who made more than 20 appearances for Stan Cullis’s Wolves in the first half of the 1950s and who turned 90 last month has also thrilled Ian Ross, the Tyneside-based statistician who targeted dozens of former players to try to ensure they received the retrospective title winners’ medals they were due.

“When I first wrote to Backpass to publicise the story and list, the person I thought was least likely to get his title medal was Ron,” he said.

Here is a reminder of some of the other achievements that have brought us a warm glow over the years:

*Tracing, with considerable assistance, Floyd Streete in the Caribbean and Gary Bellamy in Essex, so they could be invited to a 20th anniversary get-together of Graham Turner’s Sherpa Van Trophy winners at Molineux.

*Presenting Phil Parkes with a ‘scroll of honour’ certificate sent us by Les Wilson after their 1979 Vancouver Whitecaps side were named a decade ago as a Team of Distinction in Canada’s Soccer Hall of Fame.

*Helping host and organiser John Doughty with the 2012 reunion of the Wolves FA Youth Cup final team from 50 years earlier – and seeing to it that the club invited them to the following day’s Premier League game against Everton.

*Not only tracking down long-lost former Wolves players such as Danny Hegan, John Farley, Bernard Shaw, Freddie Goodwin, Ernie Hunt and Dave Burnside, but, in most cases, visiting them in person for interview purposes. What’s more, the site’s no 1 outside contributor, our good friend Charles Bamforth, used a work trip to Australia to go and meet (separately) Joe Wilson, Alun Evans and Dave Maclaren.

*Reconnecting Bertie Lutton and our co-owner John Richards following 37 years apart after a letter to a newspaper in Belfast drew the answer we were looking for as to the whereabouts of members of the former Northern Ireland international’s family – in Wolverhampton!

*Being trusted by Ron Flowers to twice go and quietly and respectfully meet the Boys of 66 at two of their hush-hush golf days at Brocton Hall, his home club and one well known to Wolves players of the 1970s especially. What a thrill!

*Coming up on here with the unique Afobe to Zyro list that provided an interesting countdown to discover who the 1,000th man to play League football for Wolves was going to be; an accolade that fell (at Rotherham in August, 2016) to Jon Dadi Bodvarsson.

*Getting 1970s Wolves forward John Black back together with his teenage sweetheart Roberta after four decades apart. From home in Australia, she saw an article about him on here and we were more than happy to provide the reintroductions – ones that still see them happily together in the north of Scotland another four years on.

*Providing the publicity that provided a small part in helping Bert Williams with his Alzheimer’s research money-raising – and then boosting his huge kitty a little more by buying some of his cut-glass and framed Wolves paintings.

*Being invited on to the Molineux pitch at half-time to talk about Bill Slater during the FA Cup tie against Liverpool in January, 2019 – and then representing the club at his funeral in West London soon afterwards.

*Having John Richards and Davd Instone invited on to the committee sitting in judgement on future inductees to Wolves’ Hall of Fame; a role that has so far been severely restricted by covid but which will hopefully increase as lockdown rules continue to be eased.

And here’s to more of all those happy events!