The Old Golds Meet Up Coasting Towards a Powerful Season Start!

Happy Meet-Ups At The Seaside

Two former Wolves players 20 years or so apart have illuminated a hectic, ground-hopping weekend for us to the north-west.

Gerry Farrell and Keith Downing had contrasting associations with Molineux after both being seen as full-backs early in their playing days.

While Downing came to be regarded as a tenacious central midfielder soon after his arrival from Notts County and went on to play 228 games for the club of his young dreams, Farrell built on his time as an apprentice here by developing a far-reaching career as a no 2 or 3.

Unlike the West Midlander, the Liverpudlian didn’t progress beyond the reserves after featuring prominently at youth and reserve team level.

“I enjoyed my time there,” Farrell told us. “I played plenty of matches in the Central League and made some wonderful frendships that have been renewed in the last few years by my visits to the golf day that Steve Daley organises each Sepember.

“He played in the same youth side as me, Alan Sunderland, Peter Eastoe and many other promising lads and I remember coming in at the end of one game after we had won and I had scored a rare goal.

“I was captain and said ‘well played, lads’, only for Bill McGarry to appear behind me and ask what qualification I had for expressing an opinion like that! It was never a bed of roses at Wolves.”

Farrell had to move on for first-team football, which came after he linked up with Ken Furphy at Blackburn. He played 21 senior games while at Ewood Park and the fact Rovers were the opposition at Morecambe on Friday made him relieved he could attend.

He wasn’t the only one! We were royally entertained by him during our first visit to a seaside venue at which he is a regular watcher and sponsor, as well as co-organiser of the former players association.

Downing was in the away dug-out for a highly competitive 1-1 friendly draw, which was repeated yesterday when Blackburn – in Austria for a training camp and game a week ago – went to Wigan for another warm-up fixture.

While he has spent all of his long career as a player and coach in the UK, Farrell played in South Africa for five years before heading back to these shores to play for Morecambe in non-League football.

On the Fylde coast, we also met up with Wolverhampton-born retired journalist Mike Young and travelled with him to watch Barrow’s 2-2 home draw against Spanish third-tier club Real Union yesterday.

Mike used to travel with the Cumbrian club when reporting for the Barrow Evening Mail at the end of their long previous stint in the Football League and for many seasons in the Northern Premier League.

He is the son of the late Percy Young, a Cambridge-educated scholar who wrote books about or with Wolves, Derek Dougan and others as well as travelling as a translator with Bill McGarry’s squad to Carl Zeiss Jena in the 1971-72 UEFA Cup.

As if we haven’t revived enough Wanderers links this weekend, we also saw ex-Wolves keeper Harry Burgoyne go on as a Morecambe substitute in the second half two nights ago.