Former Wolves stalwarts Tony Daley and Steve Froggatt have warmed up for tomorrow’s big West Midlands derby – with an appearance at a Villa celebration event.
The two wingers, who had long spells at Molineux after being brought across the patch by Graham Taylor in the summer of 1994, appeared this week at a function to mark the 30-year anniversary of Villa’s League Cup final triumph over Manchester United.
Daley played in the surprise 3-1 victory for Ron Atkinson’s side while Froggatt appeared in some of the earlier rounds and was a squad member.
The event, held in the directors’ club at Villa Park, was hosted by Andy Blair, the midfielder who served both clubs and became Wolves’ first ever loan signing.
Daley is due to be present for Wolves’ short trip across the West Midlands tomorrow teatime and is also due to be in attendance, along with Jody Craddock, at a Wolves Trust charity event at the Emerald Club in early June.
He followed his injury-hit stint at Molineux with long service as the club’s fitness coach while Froggatt spent more than five years as a player before being sold, at a profit, to Coventry.
We have written before about how matches between tomorrow’s opponents attracted huge Bank Holiday crowds in decades long ago but, in doffing our cap once more to Wolves’ League Cup winners of 1974 at the end of the month that has contained the 50th anniversary of their epic final win over Manchester City, we switch our attention now to a managerial link behind the Wembley story.
Photos and footage of the teams emerging from the dressing rooms into the sunshine remind us that Bill McGarry and Ron Saunders were the overcoat-clad men in charge but how many remember that one signed the other a decade before?
McGarry was still a relative newcomer to management when he handed over £15,000 of Watford’s money to take the prolific forward from Portsmouth in 1964.
Saunders repaid the faith by scoring at the rate of around a goal a game in some 40 outings while at Vicarage Road, although most of those came after McGarry decamped to Ipswich.
And therein lies another coincidence…..while his reputation in the dug-out continued to soar at Portman Road, Saunders would make his mark on the sidelines at Ipswich’s East Anglian arch rivals Norwich, the club Wolves defeated in the semi-final of their 1973-74 League Cup run.
Various players have made the point over the years that McGarry was respected rather than liked in the dressing room and the Wolverhampton Chronicle had the manager recognising that very point in their preview of the big game.
“I am tremendously happy for certain people that we have reached the final,” the manager is quoted as sayin to them. “It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to look at those people, who in the past few months have criticised my ways – and that includes certain directors at Molineux.
“If the players ever said they would win something for somebody, they wouldn’t say it was for me.They would say it was for John Ireland, our chairman.”
Of the Wembley challenge his men rose to brilliantly, he added: “I’m pleased City got through because, with all due respect to (beaten semi-finalists) Plymouth, we would have been on a hiding to nothing if we had met them.”