‘Grandad Veno’ on Those In-Between Months

What do football managers and coaches do in between jobs? Some DIY, perhaps. Attend to family matters that might sometimes be pushed on to the back burner? Maybe, like Graham Potter, they take a holiday in the Falklands.

Mark Venus’s time since he and Tony Mowbray left Albion for the second time has been channelled in largely predictable ways – but he did surprise us with one revelation, of which more will be explained shortly.

“I love football, so I watch lots of games,” he said. “Some down here at Ipswich and Colchester near where I live and loads on TV. Wolves are still very close to my heart after I played all those games for them but I only caught a bit of the one against Forest on Wednesday while I was flicking through from channel to channel.

“I do tend to jump from match to match but I enjoy watching Arsenal, so they had most of my attention. I’ve been debating whether to go to Ipswich v Coventry this weekend because I am always well looked after when I go and have been there and Colchester about three times each this season.

“One of the matches at Portman Road was against Derby, so I saw Keith Downing from a distance. I didn’t get to speak to him but our last match with Albion was at home to Derby at Easter, so I had a chat with him then.”

Venus lives in ‘Constable Country’, just off the A12 between Colchester and Ipswich, closer to the club he didn’t play for than the one in whose hall of fame he was inducted earlier this year along with Richard Naylor and David Johnson.

That leaves Newmarket within striking distance and his love of horses draws him there, especially as it’s seen as a mecca for the flat racing that he prefers.

“I tend to go to the tracks more in the summer months when football takes a break,” he added. “I’ve had shares in lots of horses over the years and currently have one in a four-year-old called Desperate Dan, who runs over a mile and won a big race at Doncaster the last time he was out.

“Although I have elderly parents in the north-east and regularly go back up there to see them, I am well settled down here near the Suffolk/Essex border. Flatford Mill, which Constable made famous, is fairly close and my son is in the next village to here.

“My daughter is around five miles away and has recently given birth to a daughter, Magnolia, so I am a grandad now. People say it’s life-changing and I’m finding out how incredible it is. Amazing, really.”

Remarkably, we’re approaching 30 years since Venus was despatched to Ipswich by Mark McGhee in a player-plus-cash deal also involving Steve Sedgley after the last of the north-easterner’s 338 first-team Wolves matches.

That huge figure leaves only 25 men ahead of him in the club’s all-time record appearance-makers’ list and, with long-time Molineux team-mates Steve Bull, Robbie Dennison, Andy Mutch and Andy Thompson already inducted, might he one day become one of the very few men to be named in the hall of fame at two clubs?

It was at Ipswich that he struck up the friendship with defensive partner Tony Mowbray that led to their long double act in the dug-out; one that has taken in another eight clubs together.

“His first management job was at Hibernian in 2004 and I went with him, although I was still registered as a player after winding down that side of my career at Cambridge United and Dagenham & Redbridge,” the 58-year-old added.

“I played one first-team game for them – on astroturf at Hamilton if I remember right – and a few in the reserves but Tony decided he wanted me in the dug-out with him rather than on the pitch.

“And now I’d say we’ve worked together for 16 or 17 seasons. I don’t know how many matches that adds up to but it’s a lot, although there have been breaks between clubs as well, including last year when Tony was having his treatment.

“And it’s seven months now since we left Albion. There are a few of us from my generation at Wolves who are still out there coaching or managing, like Keith, Rob Kelly, Mike Stowell and Paul Cook. I speak to them all from time to time and used to talk a lot to Ron Jukes in his later years because he always enjoyed sharing opinions on players.”

More than once in recent years, we have gently chided Venus about him no longer being the most famous man to have come out of the Teesside coastal resort of Seaton Carew, that tag having been seized by the disappearing (and later jailed) canoeist, John Darwin. 

So, on to the pastime the one-time Hartlepool trainee surprised us with during two long phone chats this week….

“Ever since my time playing for Wolves, I have been into stocks and shares,” he told us. “Tim Steele had the same interest, so we had something else to talk about other than football.

“I enjoyed following the Stock Market and have kept that interest going into my later working years.”