Wolves 1 QPR 0
Wolves have been promoted to the Premier League following the home victory over QPR. Wolves have been promoted to the Premier League following the home victory over QPR. Sylvan Ebanks-Blake scored one minute into the second half to send Mick McCarthy's men to the top flight of English football for the first time since 2004. For pictures, click here For video, click here The result meant none of their Championship rivals could prevent them rejoining the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. The Molineux faithful were delirious after the division's leading scorer settled their nerves in his first appearance since injury. Second placed Birmingham City won 1-0 away at Watford but it was not enough to prevent Wolves from clinching promotion. With two games to play, Wolves have a record of played 44, won 26, drawn eight, lost 10, giving them a current points tally of 86 points. They need only one point from their remaining two games to be crowned champions. After the game, victorious manager Mick McCarthy said he was "struggling" to come to terms with the promotion. "The players have been brilliant today," he said. "When we lost a few their character was challenged by a few people but never by me. "It's a great achievement for the club and everyone involved with the club. You would have to ask somebody else how it feels, because I am struggling to express myself at the minute. "I just want to enjoy the moment and take it all in."
It surely won't be long before Wolves have the DVD of this promotion triumph on the shelves and you can see the credits now.
Written by Mick McCarthy, from an original idea by Jez Moxey, performed by the Players, starring Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, with Steve Morgan as producer.
For pictures, click here
For video, click here
Molineux has not always been home to such all-embracing teamwork in the last 20 years but it is now – and Saturday's delirious scenes were its hugely-satisfying reward.
This has been a quite brilliant promotion, made all the more memorable not just by the team's domination of the Championship but also its point of origin.
No-one should forget that the euphoria which has left the city beaming has, as its starting point, a very different mood and set of circumstances three years ago.
Wolves went in to that summer of 2006 sleeping under the duvet of apathy, bored and unconvinced by a soon-to-be-gone Glenn Hoddle and with a team about to be broken up and discarded, its previous Premier League promotion a distant memory.
The young and hungry culture which sprang from that crisis, driven by chief executive Moxey and cultivated by McCarthy and his scouting team, was given the time and support required to ride the peaks of promise and troughs of disappointment to reach their goal shortly before 5pm on Saturday, April 18, 2009.
And though he plays a quiet hand, a nod for Morgan too.
It would have been all too easy for the owner to arrive in the early months of this strategy, tear up the plan, clear out the management structure and bring in his own team having finally got his hands on a club of substance. It was, after all, his baby to bring up exactly as he pleased.
But he did precisely the opposite. He bought into the long-range vision and remained steadfast when the going got tough a year ago; he earned his sip from the champagne glasses clinking in the boardroom on Saturday just as surely as Ebanks-Blake and Co.
And there is a message in all of this, not just for Wolves but for football.
Amid the carnage of today's media-driven game, in which managers and plans can be tossed aside like cheap takeaways, a much more fulfilling dish is to be had by those who draw up a plan, ignore the phone-ins and stick to it.
As fate would have it, this was the 50th anniversary of the very day Stan Cullis received a telegram from Matt Busby congratulating Wolves on what would be their last top-flight championship following a 5-0 victory at Luton.
Wolves' revered history sometimes burdens the players of today but you can't help feel that even Billy and his boys of '59 would doff their cap to McCarthy's lot and welcome them to Molineux's executive lounge reserved for players of special achievement.
Top goalscorers, promotion in the bag before the FA Cup semi-finals had been resolved, the championship trophy – yes, the very same piece of silverware Billy clutched in 1959 – surely to follow.
At its best, the football has been packed with exciting, attacking play the elders would recognise only too well, the ball swept out wide for an avalanche of crosses from which forwards profited.
At its worst, it has been all that a manager and the supporters can ask for in times of adversity – tough, committed and determined.
Of course, it won't be long before the thousands who got drunk on delight after Saturday's victory have sobered up and started asking the tough questions now facing the 'Three Ms' as they plan for Phase Two – how does the club now stay in the Premier League?
Less than an hour after the final whistle, one colleague received a marketing text from Ladbrokes installing Wolves as 13-8 favourites for the drop, a sobering comment on the task ahead which will not be resolved simply by narrowing the pitch and making a bid for Rory Delap.
But there is plenty of time to start worrying about the tomorrows.
Today is all about saluting the here and now which carries with it the message that, for all the worries Wolves fans will hold for these players as they make the step up, their character and togetherness should not be disputed.
Although Wolves had to be content with Ebanks-Blake's solitary 46th minute goal in sinking QPR, this was a thoroughly-deserved victory by a team which played without any tell-tale signs of anxiety.
They survived a couple of hairy moments but there was no doubting which team was the dominant force and which of the two were on the cusp of the Premier League.
Wolves racked up a steady stream of opportunities as a revitalised Andy Keogh and non-stop Matt Jarvis led the show.
And when an important goal has been required this season, Ebanks-Blake has invariably been Wolves' 'go to' player.
His 25th goal of a pulsating season teed up the celebrations which blew the roof off Molineux come the final whistle.
