Keeper’s Long Wait For A Molineux Return

Much to his frustration, Scott Barrett has never come up against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the 22 years since he was sold by Graham Turner.

His playing career still had more than a decade and a half to run when he joined Stoke for £10,000 in 1987 but his path never crossed again with that of his first professional club, nor has it yet during his coaching career.

“It’s amazing really considering I played several hundred more league games after leaving Wolves,” said the 46-year-old former keeper.

“You’d have thought I’d have faced them somewhere in all of that time but it just hasn’t happened – not even in a cup game or a friendly, as a player or a coach.

“In fact, I don’t think I have been back to Molineux since the day I left. I’d love to see the stadium how it now is because obviously it was in a very run-down state in the mid-1980s when I was there.”

As no 2 to Mark Stimson at Gillingham, Barrett might have thought he was getting closer, status-wise, to Wolves when the Kent club beat Shrewsbury in the League Two play-off final in May – except Mick McCarthy’s side had long since completed their own promotion journey!

There is a slight Wolves connection in the assistant manager’s recent past, though, as he and Stimson were in charge at Grays Athletic when Michael Kightly became one of the bargains of the year 2006 by moving north from the non-League club.

Now, while Kightly and his Wolves colleagues count off the days to their side’s opening Premier League game against West Ham, Gillingham are looking forward to the visit of Swindon when the League One campaign gets under-way a week earlier.

And Ilkeston-born Barrett, who played for Stoke, Colchester, Stockport, Gillingham, Cambridge United, Kingstonian, Leyton Orient and Grays after ending his 35-game Wanderers career, has revealed he actually went close to pulling on Wolves’ colours again a few weeks ago.

“I had a call from Phil Robinson asking if I was available to play in the Midland Masters for them,” he added.

“Unfortunately, it was short notice and I had something else arranged that weekend. It would have been great to see some of the friends I still have up there.

“I did play for Wolves in the finals of the same tournament at Sheffield a few years ago. I don’t think Andy Thompson was playing but it was good to be in the same team as Bully and Mutchy again.”