NO SYMPATHY FROM ME FOR STRICKEN WOLVES

NO SYMPATHY FROM ME FOR STRICKEN WOLVES   by Frank Watson

I’ve never really liked Wolves. Partly because they once employed Kevin Muscat whose ‘tackling’ of opponents made him football’s equivalent of Jack The Ripper. In 1998 his assault on Craig Bellamy left the City player needing ten stitches in a knee wound and at one stage his visits to the FA’s old headquarters at Lancaster Gate were so frequent he could have had his mail delivered there. However, my real antipathy to the Black Country club began almost exactly thirty-nine years ago, on March 23^rd 1973, when, on a filthy wet day and after a dismal 0-3 defeat, my brother and I were part of a group of Norwich fans chased from Molineux to Wolverhampton station by a gang of hooligans who made Muscat look like Mother Teresa. I have to this day never been so appallingly, gut-wrenchingly terrified, not even when Mark Fotheringham was made City captain.

So without even realising it, I suppose, I set out to Saturday’s game with a certain mindset. Sometimes you do have a soft spot for other teams, don’t you? I’ve always liked Crewe, for example, and East Fife. But not Wolves. I have no sympathy with their plight. If they are relegated I just hope a few sixty year old ex-skinheads feel the pain!

I followed a Wolves fan’s car into the city before the game. It carried a banner across the rear window screaming ‘Moxey Out! Honk if you agree.’ I honked repeatedly, just for fun. To be fair why wouldn’t they want to remove a Chief Executive whose response, in the club’s hour of need, was to sack the decent, if miserable, Mick McCarthy to replace him with Lenny Henry's little brother?

As I parked near the ground some visiting fans emerged from another car.

‘Lovely day for it,’ I remarked politely.

The ensuing conversation reminded me of another reason I don’t particularly like Wolves. Their fans speak a different language.

‘Yowgonnagiveusaroytdoin’ said one.

‘Weemrizoynedtoagooindahn. Juzeerferthelasroyts,’ commented his mate.

I muttered something about the weather before beginning my walk to the ground and a desperate attempt to translate the meaning of their mangled vowels. Eventually I worked out what they had said.

‘You’re going to give us a right doing’ and ‘We are resigned to going down. Just here for the last rites’ had been their pessimistic observations.

Given that they had not seen their team score for weeks and that they almost certainly live in Wolverhampton their gloom, I suppose, was understandable.

In contrast the home support was excellent and even when the impressive Jarvis ended the Midlanders’ goal drought early on the strains of ‘On The Ball City’ were immediate, soon turning to delirium as Grant Holt executed a brilliant finish for an almost instant equaliser. With City taking the lead before half-time many of us might have expected more goals after the break and a rare opportunity to sit back and revel in some Premier League showboating, but the third goal wouldn’t come so we remained edgy throughout.

On a personal note I was delighted when, minutes before the end, my former school pupil Johnny Gorman was introduced as a Wolves substitute.

Ultimately sunshine, another win and almost certain Premier League survival made the whole outing pretty satisfactory even allowing for some late anxiety following our skipper’s second yellow card for a tackle that Kevin Muscat would have regarded as embarrassingly ‘powder puff’.

Arriving back at the car there was just time for one more comment from the Wolves fan in the next vehicle.

‘Yow deserved it,’ he said. ‘Thadholtsahanfulinee?’