Familiar Trio In Final Spotlight

It’s time for a question from left field: Who are the three former Wolves players who lined up elsewhere as team-mates and played together in a winning cup final team at Wembley?

We are happy to offer this as a clue: One of them was skipper and even scored the opening goal.

And another one: One of the trio had given Wolves considerable service by then while the other two were still to land and sign in these parts.

The match in question is the 1991 final of the Zenith Data Systems Cup – the higher-division equivalent of the Sherpa Van Trophy that Wolves won three years earlier.

It was won 4-1 by Crystal Palace against Everton on April 7, some four months after Graham Turner’s Wolves – victorious in their opening assignment in the competition at Leicester – had gone out at home to Leeds in the next round.

So, we wonder how many of our readers have already come up with the names of the Molineux-connected trio in the triumphant line-up at Wembley.

Geoff Thomas is probably the first one that springs to mind as he was still Palace captain after leading the Eagles out in an FA Cup final against Manchester United that went to a replay the previous spring.

He opened the scoring with a powerful diving header at three-quarter time but, like the original Palace-United classic, extra-time was required following a quick equaliser from Robert Warzycha.

And that was when the Londoners took full control thanks to three more goals in 15 minutes, two of them from Ian Wright, the other from John Salako.

None of which reveals the identity of the other two men we were seeking. They are defenders John Humphrey and Eric Young.

Full-back Humphrey was nicknamed ‘Tasty’ in the Palace dressing room because of his perceived good looks, having served his formative years in the game with Wolves and made 164 first-team appearances while in the West Midlands.

Young had already achieved Wembley immortality as part of the Wimbledon side who shocked Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final under the management of Bobby Gould.

He was brought to Molineux by Graham Taylor in the autumn of 1995 and scored a few weeks later in a 3-2 defeat away to Palace.

Young totalled 40 senior games for Wolves, having been born in Singapore the day before Stan Cullis’s Wanderers beat Villa 1-0 in the 1960 FA Cup semi-final at The Hawthorns.