Disclosures Galore From Long-Time Wolves Scout

A year or two after his departure from Wolves in 1994, Ron Jukes sounded me out about ghost-writing his autobiography.

I listened with interest but pressure of every-day work, plus involvement with other book projects, prompted me to decline.

Happily, the club’s long-time chief scout found a very accomplished co-writer in historian Geoff Allman and the duo – now both sadly deceased – delivered an excellent story of his life.

I have just had another slow read through of ‘Superscout: The Ron Jukes Story‘ and reminded myself that he did plenty more besides taking Steve Bull to Wolves and Allan Clarke and Sedgley-born keeper Phil Parkes to Walsall.

Ron could be gruff and unforgiving – well, he was a magistrate in West Bromwich for 14 years from 1975-89 and a headmaster as the climax of a teaching career of more than three decades – but he was a top operator in his (football) field, with Graham Turner working happily and successfully alongside him at Shrewsbury and Hereford as well as at Molineux.

So here are a few of the many revelations in ‘Superscout‘ that weren’t known at the time, or at least have been forgotten in the passing of the years:

*Jukes may have had weight and mobility problems in later life but had played a lot of football and cricket as a younger man and was actually a junior with Wolves, as well as playing alongside Ronnie Allen in the Staffordshire under-18 side in the 1940s.

*He died in January, 2008 aged around 80 and was old enough to have watched Bert Williams and Johnny Hancocks play for Walsall before they joined Wolves.

*He revealed how he turned down the chance to link up with Tommy Docherty and former Walsall coach Arthur Cox at Villa despite The Doc increasing his offer four or five times in their hour-long meeting.

*Brian Caswell, who had a brief loan spell at Wolves in 1987 after a long career at Walsall, was taught by Ron at school and was then signed by him as one of two Football League players the scout had known as pupils under his charge.

*Jukes described Alan Boswell as one of his ‘best-ever discoveries’, although the keeper followed impressive stints with Walsall and Shrewsbury by having a chequered time at Ronnie Allen’s Wolves.

*He recalled Alan Birch – another later Molineux signing – making his Saddlers debut at the age of 16 in a 4-3 win over Bristol Rovers and scoring a last-day hat-trick at Peterborough in 1977.

*Despite being a keen Wolves and Walsall fan in his formative years, Jukes rejected the advances of Bill McGarry at Molineux in early 1974 after leaving the Saddlers. He was uneasy about reporting directly to the manager independent of the overall scouting system and went instead to Birmingham.

*He met Shrewsbury manager Graham Turner for talks at the Spread Eagle on the A5 near Penkridge early in 1981 and so their long association kicked off.

*Jukes then said ‘no’ to joining Turner at Villa when he was pursued repeatedly by him, believing the ‘inspirational motivator’ was not quite ready for such a big step up.

*Turner, having been Jukes’s boss for many years at the Gay Meadow, actually worked FOR him for Derby in the weeks between the manager’s sacking by Villa and his appointment at Wolves in October, 1986.

*A few weeks after visiting Molineux to oversee son Darren’s transfer to Wolves, Alex Ferguson sent Jukes a full dossier on Chelsea before Graham Turner’s side visited them in the quarter-final of the FA Cup in March, 1994.

*Ron turned down an approach from Mark Venus (one of his numerous bargain buys at Molineux) to go to Hibernian with he and his boss, Tony Mowbray, in 2004. 

*Another ex-Wolves man might have gone to Hereford at the call of Turner and Jukes in addition to Steve Bull, Robbie Dennison, Keith Downing, Richard Leadbeater and others. When Downing left Edgar Street to return to Molineux, his player-coach job was offered to Kevin Keen but he chose to sign for Macclesfield as he wanted to play for another year. Phil Robinson, yet another former Wolves player, was appointed instead.

*At Telford at the end of his career, where his signings included Sam Ricketts and Lee Mills, the author was reluctantly made a director.

Superscout (Tempus Publishing) has a foreword written by Turner and came out in 2006, price £12.99.