Four decades on from one of the lowest Molineux crowds and the dark days at Wolves

A few years ago, when the Grand Circle was made up of benches, you could have fitted them all in the Grand Theatre with room to spare.  The Civic Hall would only have been half full.  A figure which would now amount to little over five percent of Molineux’s current capacity.

On this day in 1986, or more to the point evening, Wolves took on Torquay United in the preliminary round of the Freight Rover Trophy.

Wolves, a few months off completing the final of three successive steps on descent from First Division to Fourth, sat bottom of the third tier. Torquay, in the middle of three seasons finishing 92nd, 92nd and 91st at a time when finishing bottom didn’t automatically spell relegation, occupied bottom spot in Division Four.

So it’s fair to say that no one was expecting a classic.

But on that cold January night at Molineux, with half the ground shut due to restrictions following the Bradford fire, only 1,618 trudged relatively unambitiously through the turnstiles.

It was billed at the time as the lowest first team attendance in the club’s history, the previous worst having been 2,000 for a First Division match against Accrington Stanley in 1892.

“They could have announced the crowd changes before the game rather than the players,” quips Dean Edwards, who played up front for Wolves on the night.

Geoff Palmer, twice a Wembley winner with Wolves in the League Cup, including against Manchester City in 1974 in front of a crowd of nearly 100,000, was only a few weeks into a second spell at Molineux having spent a year at Burnley.

Life at Molineux was now very different, as Palmer was quickly to discover.

And with the vast expanse of the South Bank, up there with Aston Villa’s Holte End as one of the biggest terraces in the country, even with only two Stands open, the lack of numbers was there for all to see.

“You could definitely see the gaps, and you could hear everything the fans were saying as well,” says Palmer.

“A lot of it wasn’t too complimentary!

“I hadn’t been too happy at Burnley, and I nearly went to Walsall where Dales (Steve Daley) was playing.

“But Wolves is my team, and my ties were back there – it’s the club I have always supported and the result I always looked out for

“The crowds though, like that night against Torquay, it just felt like it was empty.

“Usually before a home game, I’d have a sleep in the afternoon to be properly prepared and then the enthusiasm and build-up would start.

“Yet during my second spell you’d get to the ground, even walking down into the stadium, and there was no one there.

“It didn’t feel like a proper football match, because there was so little noise and atmosphere.

“And we were struggling as a team.

“The number of players that were coming and going, it felt like we ended up by trying to patch things together from game to game.

“We lost a lot of experience and were just trying to bring players in however we could, and it was never really going to work.”

The lack of crowds weren’t felt by everyone, however.

Also in the Wolves line-up that night was forward Jon Purdie, an 18-year-old in his first full season of competitive football.

A former England schoolboy international who scored five goals in seven games for his country, and graced both Wembley and Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, Purdie came through as a young talent at Arsenal which included playing alongside Charlie Nicholas, Tony Adams, Paul Merson, Michael Thomas and David Rocastle.

Arriving at Molineux with an excellent pedigree, playing regularly even in front of the sparse home attendances, was something he hadn’t experienced before.

“Playing reserve team football at Arsenal at 16 and 17 was pretty much in front of three men and his dog, so even the crowds at Wolves for my first season were way bigger than anything I was used to,” says Purdie, who joined the club in 1985.

“So that was never a problem for me.