It is somewhat fitting that on Sunday Liverpool should face Wolves in their final league fixture of the season for first time since 1975-76 – when once again they will be aiming to record the win that could yet see them crowned as League Champions.
The circumstances are undoubtedly different to the night of Tuesday 4 May 1976 when Liverpool arrived at Molineux knowing victory would secure the title – and in defeating Wolves they would relegate them to Division Two.
Three points on Sunday might not be enough for Liverpool to prevail should Manchester City triumph at Brighton – and next season seventh-placed Wolves will be competing in the Europa League rather than the division below, irrespective of the Anfield result.
But all this time later there is something strangely circuitous about the teams facing each other in such circumstances.
43 years ago Wolves needed to beat Liverpool in order to avoid playing second-tier football for the first time in nine years (providing fellow-strugglers Birmingham City lost at already-relegated Sheffield United on the same night).
Victory for the home side at Molineux would also ensure Queens Park Rangers were League Champions for the first time – QPR having finished their league programme nine days before, sitting atop of the table since finishing their fixtures with a 2-0 home win over Leeds United on Saturday 24 April, the final Saturday of the 1975-76 season.
So literally and metaphorically speaking all roads led to Molineux on that Tuesday early in May. An estimated 35,000 Liverpool supporters converged on Wolverhampton in the hope of seeing their side become champions for the second time in four seasons – victory also giving manager Bob Paisley his first honour since taking the reins from Bill Shankly two years before.
The actual number of Liverpool fans inside the ground that evening can only be guessed at (the official attendance figure of 48,900 has always appeared too exact and conservative to be correct).
Yet whatever the guesswork and subsequent claims made on the size of the gate (one estimate put it closer to sixty than fifty thousand) beyond dispute is that a father and fifteen year-old son managed to secure a place down in the corner of the North Bank terrace – among an apprehensive congestion of old gold and black.
From this vantage point they witnessed, depending on their respective ages, a second Wolves relegation in eleven years – and through these much younger eyes, something akin to the end of the world.
Before reflecting on ninety minutes that would have huge consequences for both clubs, it is necessary to set the scene on how and why events unfolded the way they had.
Originally scheduled for Saturday 24 April, as Liverpool had a first leg UEFA Cup Final against Belgian side Club Brugge to play at Anfield four days later, the Football League gave permission for the Molineux encounter to be postponed.
In the interests of fairness one presumes, the Sheffield United v Birmingham City match was also called off to prevent Wolves going into their last game with nothing to play for – a point at Bramall Lane for Birmingham would have ensured their safety and brought understandable complaints from QPR of the Molineux fixture lacking validity with Wolves already down.
In the days when the FA Cup Final was still the flagship competition of English football (and the occasional England international or European Cup Final aside, the only football match guaranteed to be broadcast live on television in the entire year), Saturday 1 May would not have been considered due to clashing with the Wembley meeting of Manchester United and Southampton.
Therefore the date was set for May 4, Liverpool arriving at Molineux in good heart after overhauling a two goal half-time deficit against Brugge six days before, to take a 3-2 advantage into the second leg.
Wolves on the other hand went into their most crucial league fixture of the decade on the back of a six match run indicative of their precarious position.
Ahead 2-0 against Leicester City in the final home match of March, two precious points were squandered as they were pegged back to draw, but early April brought a point at West Ham that was followed by a 5-0 drubbing of visiting Newcastle, results to suggest a climb away from the danger zone was underway – only for successive defeats at Arsenal and Coventry, both of whom were firmly anchored in mid-table, to put the skids under their survival chances.
On Easter Monday afternoon they scraped to a 1-0 home win over Norwich that at least carried the fight into the last game, even if they were facing the side for whom consistency was becoming a watchword – seven wins and a draw from their previous eight league outings making Liverpool an unrelenting force with only QPR (eight wins and one defeat on the run-in) moving in the same circle.
Upon our late afternoon arrival in Wolverhampton, my Dad parked the car and we walked toward Molineux through streets already thronged with red and white – soon becoming evident that reaching a turnstile, let alone going through one, was a no less tall order than Wolves faced in trying to preserve their first division status.
It was also disconcerting to hear my Dad say, ‘I’ve been through all this before you know,’ which I took as reference to the increasing likelihood of us being among thousands who looked destined to miss the match, a consequence of the gates being closed long before kick-off.
Taking his comment as allusion to a big match at Molineux in the 1950s from which he had been locked out, he qualified the comment by adding: ‘I was here in May ’47 for the last match of the 1946/47 season when Wolves played Liverpool. Whoever won would took the league title.‘
Well aware by this stage of my life the years in which Wolverhampton Wanderers had won major honours, the portents for the rest of the conversation were not good:
‘They beat the Wolves 2-1 and won the League – I can still see Albert Stubbins scoring their winning goal.’
Only a short while later, when my fascination with The Beatles had fully developed, I would certainly have made reference to Stubbins (the favourite footballer of Freddie Lennon, father of John) being on the cover of ‘Sgt Pepper‘, but at the time I was in thrall to The Who – besides as interesting as that historical titbit had been, my immediate concern was gaining entry to hopefully see Liverpool denied a repeat.
Those fears showed no sign of abating when queues for entry into the main stand and North Bank stretched back and across Waterloo Road – my Dad showing a worrying lack of urgency as we squeezed through one line after another to arrive at the car park designated for players and officials behind the North Bank.
Following him up the steps into the ‘Promotions Office’ his long-standing friendship with the ‘Wolves Lottery’ manager had stood him in good stead – cordial greetings followed by an invitation to ‘come with me,’ my Dad and I taken behind the counter to a door that when unlocked opened onto the narrow concrete concourse beneath the North Bank.
From there we went through the entrance onto the terrace, finding a place down by the corner flag where that end of Molineux joins the Waterloo Road stand.
There are many accounts of Liverpool fans gaining admission to the South Bank that night, without paying, through an exit gate that had been opened on Molineux Alley. So in respect of balance I make the same claim on behalf of two Wolves supporters – not that it provided much consolation some two and a half hours later.
From memory I would also dispute assertions of Liverpool followers being crammed into all four sides of Molineux – there were indeed pockets on both sides of the ground, although if some gained entry onto the North Bank they were a quiet minority.
The South Bank, however, was an altogether different story – and never had that colossal terrace been so congested with the supporters of one club. Not Tottenham in the May 1972 UEFA Cup Final first leg, Leeds United in their league title decider of a few days later, nor Manchester United in an FA Cup Sixth Round replay just a few weeks earlier, had filled that end of Molineux to such an extent.
The sight of spectators perched precariously up floodlight pylons was something I would see repeated in another large, antiquated football stadium before the month was out – and with every gangway and exit overflowing, from the opposite end of the ground it looked like a red and white Mount Everest.
As for the ninety minutes of football (slightly truncated according to some reports due to celebratory pitch invasions when Liverpool scored) in a recent discussion about the night, my Dad and I agreed it was a match Wolves never looked likely to win.
True, Steve Kindon fired them ahead on thirteen minutes and even though Sheffield United were a goal up against Birmingham at half-time to fuel survival talk, Liverpool were simply too good – incessant second half pressure resulting in a Kevin Keegan equaliser with fourteen minutes left.
Nine minutes later John Toshack put Liverpool ahead to settle beyond any doubt the destination of the title – that his goal prompted the watching Rangers team to leave en masse is a misconception, unless they were the Tettenhall Rangers players; the QPR squad watched events at the BBC television studios in London.
But by now their reward for playing the most attractive football around that season was second place and qualification for the UEFA Cup.
Seconds before referee George Courtney blew the final whistle Ray Kennedy completed the scoring – a charge of light-brigade proportion from the South Bank completing a night of domination for Liverpool at Molineux, despite trailing in the match for just over an hour.
For Wolves relegation was far more painful than the 3-1 defeat they had just suffered – the Molineux result made academic by Birmingham taking a point from their visit to South Yorkshire.
Shortly afterwards manager Bill McGarry, who had guided Wolves to two top six league finishes, the UEFA Cup Final, two domestic cup semi-finals and their League Cup triumph of 1974, was dispensed with and replaced by his assistant Sammy Chung.
Retaining such excellent players as John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt, Steve Daley, Alan Sunderland, Derek Parkin and Willie Carr they won Division Two at the first attempt to make a rapid top flight return – but for Liverpool the horizons were far more astounding.
Completing the 1975-76 season by holding Brugge to a draw and winning the UEFA Cup, twelve months later they not only retained the League Championship but on a warm Rome night in May 1977 swept aside Borussia Monchengladbach to become European Champions for the first time – their relentless accrual of trophies now well underway.
Far sooner than expected at the time I came to terms with Wolves suffering relegation, my disappointment dissipated on the last day of May 1976 when I saw The Who deliver a stunning set at The Valley, home of Charlton Athletic FC.
On a day when the rain fell in torrents on South London, those among the vast crowd who had clambered up perilously wet floodlight pylons for a better view of Daltrey, Entwistle, Moon and Townshend (hearing them was not a problem for anyone in the Home Counties that night) were unceremoniously told The Who would not take the stage until they came down.
No such instruction was issued at Molineux three weeks earlier.
As for Sunday it is somehow ironic that on this occasion it will be Liverpool rather than Wolves who not only must win, but need a result elsewhere to go in their favour.
But it cannot be ruled out – 1947 and 1976 is proof of that.
This article was first published on 9/5/2019.
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available as an Amazon Kindle Book.
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