Two decades have now passed since Wolves achieved what had – for 19 years – felt like a dream which would never come true, an aim which would always be out of reach, and returned to the top-flight of English football.
A momentous visit to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on Monday 26th May 2003 will be etched into the heads of every gold and black fan of a generation as their team did something so un-Wolves-like and made a comfortable job of one of the biggest games in the club’s history.
Their opponents that day, Sheffield United, had stunned many by reaching both the semi-finals of the domestic cup competitions, but despite going into the game as favourites, Wolves produced a might shock of their own by sailing to a 3-0 lead by half-time, only to hold firm in the second half to lift the Division One Play-off Final title – securing promotion to the Premier League.
Eight of Wolves’ play-off heroes – manager Dave Jones, man of the match Matt Murray, defenders Lee Naylor, Joleon Lescott, Paul Butler and Denis Irwin, and goalscorers Mark Kennedy and Kenny Miller – have shared their thoughts on a day that will live forever in the memories of supporters.
***
Aiming to end 19 years of hurt
Relegation at the end of the 1983/84 season almost signalled the end of Wolves as a football club. Nose-diving down the divisions and twice coming minutes away from going out of business completely, it was a long and hard journey back to the top-flight.
After promotion back to the second tier in 1989, Wolves would spend the next 14 years in what would become Division One, coming close to a top-flight return on several occasions, but just falling shy each time.
Matt Murray: “For me, it was crazy because I’d been at Wolves since the age of nine. I’d seen us lose to Bolton in the play-offs, I’d seen us lose to Crystal Palace, the year that only one team went up automatically, we finished second and Middlesbrough went up. There was all this heartache. I knew what it meant to the club, I knew what it meant to Sir Jack because I’d been at the club and he loved the academy and he used to come and watch us at the floodlit games and everything. He was wicked. It was great, great times because I grew up in the area, I grew up watching Bully [Steve Bull] and Stowely [Mike Stowell] and Mutchy [Andy Mutch] and Thommo [Andy Thmpson], who were all fantastic players, so knowing how close we came the year before we threw it away, but it was a different mentality going into the play-offs.”
Denis Irwin: “I was at a good old age of 37, so when you get to that age, you try to take in as much as possible. It was a huge game for me and a huge game for the people of Wolves. The club had been waiting a long time to get back up into the top league and it turned out to be a fantastic day, of which I have great memories.”
Dave Jones: “When I first arrived at the club, I think we had about 39 pros and about four of those weren’t even in the club, they were away in Belgium getting treatment, so I didn’t even see them. I remember saying to the chairman six or seven players, and Sir Jack said, ‘I thought you’d want more than that,’ and I said, ‘No, that’s how many you’d keep!’ The rest were just on big wages and not doing what the club wanted them to do, so it was about finding the players. The club did back us to a certain extent financially to get these players, then it was just trying to get the players to agree to come to the club, sell them the ambition, and luckily that’s what happened.”
Bouncing back from 2001/02 collapse
The closest Wolves had come to promotion came just 12 months before that fateful day in Cardiff. Jones’ 2001/02 team got off to an incredible start, going unbeaten for their opening 11 matches of the Division One season.
Although they had a blip during the final few months of 2001, Wolves recovered to put another run of 10 wins, with just one loss, in 11 games between January and March, putting promotion firmly within their sights. But with a 11-point lead over Black Country rivals West Bromwich Albion, Wolves picked up just two wins from their last nine matches to finish outside the automatic spots.
Paul Butler: “The year before when we didn’t go up, it still wasn’t Dave’s full squad, he still didn’t have everyone that he wanted, but he probably had about 80 per cent. He’d brought in Mark Kennedy, Shaun Newton, people like that, good players, but he was still missing some, and he said not to judge him until he had brought everybody in. Once he cleaned out the players he didn’t want and we knew we were part of it, then you can move on because you can trust everyone in that dressing room.”
Mark Kennedy: “It was just nice to be a part of a great time. The flip side of talking about the pressures that we felt of the years of hurt and not having promotion and you look at other local clubs around you, Villa were doing very well at the time, West Brom had been up and down a couple of times – the flip side of that pressure, to be part of the success completely outweighed the pressure that came with it.”
Joleon Lescott: “I didn’t feel like we had more pressure because of what happened the season before. It probably hurt more [in 2001/02] because we were so close and it was being up there, with so many points ahead and then losing it to West Brom. I think there was 10 games left and we needed two wins or something and somehow we threw it away.”
Jones: “There was a lot of pressure on the players that we tried to keep away from them and a lot of past history that we had to try and put right, and that’s not a criticism of the previous managers in any way, because there’s lots of reasons why it didn’t happen, but for me, it was just about focusing on one thing – getting a bunch of players who demanded perfection.”
Murray: “The year before, we felt we should have gone up automatically, so we weren’t prepared for the play-offs. This time, we knew we weren’t going to go automatically, but on our day, we knew we could beat anyone. We beat Newcastle in the FA Cup – we were on it, we were a good team. We’d already got into the play-offs with a few games to spare so some people could rest up and go into it strong.”
***
A squad full of quality
Having spent a lot of money rebuilding the Wolves squad the previous summer, Jones made just four signings ahead of the 2002/03 season and all free transfers.
But two of those signings just happened to be the most important incomings the club had seen Bully and Thommo arrived together in 1986 – Paul Ince and Denis Irwin. The former Manchester United duo took Wolves onto the next level as their experience rubbed off on the rest of the squad.
Lee Naylor: “We had an amazing group of players that got on. If we had a night out, 15 lads would be there and it was frightening the amount of players that we had in our team who have had great careers already going into the game. Colin Cameron was different gear, I thought. His energy, his quality, some of the goals he scored that season were ridiculous. Looking through that season, I didn’t give Sparky [Mark Kennedy] enough props, I’m not going to lie. His quality was different level. The amount of chances he created through that season was a joke. It was the confidence that I had in my teammates which I only had at Wolves and with Joleon. I knew that if a ball was going over my head, Joleon was getting it. If ever he was in trouble, then I’m always there. That was how I always felt.”
Kenny Miller: “It was such a tight dressing room that we had and probably one of the best dressing rooms I’ve had over the course of my career. I was thinking about the team the other day and when you look at that team, it’s a very, very good team. Sheff United had a very good team as well and had a very good season, but we were a bit different from the year before. We went into the play-offs on a high and really believed it was our year. At the start of the season, signing Incy [Paul Ince], bringing Denis in – which were massive, absolutely massive, signings – and when you put their experience along with me, Cams [Colin Cameron], Paul Butler, and you add in the youth of Nayls [Lee Naylor], Joleon and Matty [Murray], what they brought to the team and two unbelievable wingers as well in Shaun Newton and Mark Kennedy, it was such a strong team. But what a day Matty Murray had. He was an absolute monster on the day. The only person I haven’t mentioned is Blakey [Nathan Blake], who as a foil to me was absolutely incredible. He took all the hits, he worked his socks off, he held it up and scored a massive number of goals as well, so he was a fantastic partner for me at the time. It was an outstanding team – we had Studge [Dean Sturridge] and Alex Rae sitting on the bench that day – so it was a really strong team from back to front.”
Lescott: “We had so much balance in the team with Newts [Shaun Newton] and Sparky, Kenny [Miller] and Blakes playing opposites, Incy and Cams, you had me and Butts [Paul Butler], Nayls and Denis, the units there together. Then you’ve got Matty. They started putting their crosses outside the box later in the game because Matty was just coming for everything. As soon as you heard ‘keepers’ you’d get out the way. He’d clean you up and he would love cleaning everybody up, so I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of cleaning me out.”
Jones: “I must say, it’s one of the best squads I’ve ever worked with. The work-rate was phenomenal, they expected the best, they demanded the best from each other and there was lots of arguments and disagreements with each other, but that was because a lot of them, if not all of them, were born winners.”
Reaching the play-off final
In stark contrast to their previous season, the 2002/03 campaign didn’t start too well, but ended in stunning fashion, with the team losing just one of their final 16 league matches.
Coupled with a run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, which included impressive wins over Premier League high fliers Newcastle United and a Leicester City side which secured automatic promotion to the top-flight, eight wins in that time saw Wolves enter the play-offs in a positive mindset.
Miller: “I started this season a bit slow, and the FA Cup run that season was massive for us. We started off the second half of the season beating Newcastle in the cup and we were incredible that day, what a game it was, and we just kicked on from that. I think I had 18 goals in 23 or 24 games in the second part of the season, so I found my feet in the second half of the season with a consistent run in the team. Looking at the boys who are supplying you, those wide players in Sparky and Newts, with Denis and Nayls backing that up in the full-back areas, Blakey as a foil, everyone played their part in helping me get those goals.”
Murray: “I was nervous for Reading. For both Reading games, and you could see that from my performance [in the semi-final first leg] because I’m at fault for the first goal and then we come back and win 2-1. Second game, I started dodgy but then I grew into it and made a few saves. When Alex Rae scored that goal and you see all the fans celebrating, you know that when we’re at Cardiff, you’re thinking, ‘We can do this.’”
Naylor: “I thought we just had a great dressing room and that just took us all the way. We had a great run-in at the end which took us into the play-offs. We went in on form and I knew we were going to get promoted the minute we beat Reading. That was going to be a tough, tough game because we always struggled against Reading then, so you always knew it was going to be a tough game. You always had to pull your sleeves up, but the minute we got past that, I knew it was ours.”
***
Pre-match nerves
A 3-1 aggregate win over Reading secured Wolves’ spot in the Division One play-off final for the first time in four attempts, having come up short against Bolton Wanderers, Crystal Palace and Norwich City in their previous semi-final appearances.
With such an important game ahead of a squad which had a good mix of both experience and youth, it was always going to be a nervy occasion, especially for the likes of academy graduates Murray, Naylor and Lescott, but it didn’t stop Irwin – a boyhood Wolves supporter – from feeling the weight of the past 19 years hanging on his shoulders.
Irwin: “I was nervous. Absolutely. When you play any game, whether it’s in the Premier League, League One or below that, I think most players should have a little bit of nerves. Of course, it’s how you handle those nerves which determines how high you go up on the ladder. There were going to be plenty of nerves, whether you’re me at 37, or you’re a young Lee Naylor, a young Joleon Lescott or a young Matt Murray, playing what would have been the biggest game of their lives.”
Miller: “I don’t usually get too nervous before a game, but before that game I was because I knew what it meant to everybody, the fans, the club, and us as players. As soon as I signed for the club, I had one aim and that was to get to the Premier League and play in the Premier League and that was all at stake.”
Murray: “We went down to Cardiff a couple of nights before and Darren Campbell, he probably won’t remember it, he was mates with Nathan Blake, but he was training down there at the time and he ended up in our room. The guys are chilling and having a few drinks and I just wanted to go to bed because I was nervous. I end up speaking to him and I said, ‘Big man, I’m nervous about tomorrow’. He asked why and I said, ‘Well, it’s my biggest game,’ and I was projecting and worrying about all the things. He said, ‘You haven’t just arrived here, you haven’t just been plonked at the Millennium Stadium tomorrow to play in front of 70,000 people like you’ve never been in goal before. All that stuff you’ve done back and forth, back and forth, your parents rushing you home from training, the heartbreak, the gym, all the stuff, has prepared you.’ He said, ‘I stand on the Olympics and I’m going to run 100 metres or 200 metres and I’ve done four years training, plus all the other stuff, for just 10 or 20 seconds. If I false start, it’s all over. So think of the things going through my head. You’ve got 90 minutes to go and do your thing, where you belong.’ Honestly, it was the most unbelievable thing. It was wicked and I went to bed feeling really good. I woke up the morning of the game and I didn’t feel the same nerves. I was excited and I did the walk and the guys were there, and I thought, ‘This is a dressing room I want to be in.’ We hadn’t been to the stadium, we hadn’t done anything, but we looked around to a man and we saw Incey, Denis, Joleon, Nayls, Butts, everybody, and you thought, ‘Yeah, we’ve got this.’”
Building up to the game in Cardiff
Tickets sold out straight after going on sale, with queues of supporters camping outside the ticket office at Molineux to ensure they secured their spot to watch their heroes in the biggest game of a generation.
Jones took the squad down to Cardiff a few days ahead of the final as they spent their final days of the season training and connecting on and off the pitch to make sure the bond between the players was as strong as possible if they were to overcome a difficult Sheffield side.
Lescott: “We came down a couple of days before and we stayed at a hotel and the preparation was really good. This was the first time I’d gone out onto the pitch following the warm-up because I never used to go out before the games to check out the stadium and stuff like that. I would just always go through the same routine as I would always do and just try to keep as composed as possible. I was injured going into this game and I was due to have an operation after this game and after the parade, so I’m going into it knowing how bad it was. I don’t know if they’d have let me play now.”
Jones: “It was difficult for us to get them to go down a couple of days before because everyone just wanted to treat it like a normal away game. No-one wanted to go and see the stadium, they were so focused, and full credit to them all. I always remember us training when we were selling the tickets and they had to open the doors to let the fans watch the training session and they were coming in in their droves. I got a shout of Jez Moxey and Richard Skirrow to go and see the chairman that he had in the ground, expecting him to wish us all the best, and Sir Jack told me that a friend of his called Oscar had said that we’d lost the dressing room. You’ve got to remember the season we’d just had, and to this day I never found out who Oscar was, but Sir Jack said we’d lost the dressing room and I just said to him, ‘No, it’s in the same place, it’s never moved!’ And he said, ‘Ok, all the best!’”
Butler: “We went into the game and the build-up to it was that we knew Sheffield United had got to a semi-final of the FA Cup and they'd also got to the League Cup semi, so they’d played about 60 games that season, they’d played a hell of a lot of games. They weren’t an oldish team, but Stuart McCall was in there, and it was a good match up with Incey, but we knew that we had more energy and more legs than they did, if we got at them.”
Murray: “Sheffield United had gone to the ground before and looked around, and we turned up at the stadium and there was red and white everywhere, but you went around the corner and it was gold and black. Even the ones that were experienced, there were loads of lads in that dressing room who had already been promoted, you could look around and everyone was saying, ‘We’re going to do it for these [fans]. We’ll do it for everyone in this bus but were doing it for these.’ We were on it. There’s no way we weren’t winning that game. It was ours. All day.”
***
Confidence among the squad
Despite Sheffield United having finished their Division One campaign in third position, and four points ahead of Wolves, Jones’ squad were in high spirits as they stepped out at the Millennium Stadium.
A big win over Reading, who had often been a thorn in the Old Gold side, in the play-off semi-final gave the players a lot of confidence as they faced the FA Cup and League Cup semi-finalists, and although they wouldn’t have admitted it before the match, the Wolves players felt they already had one hand on the trophy.
Naylor: “I just knew we were going to win. I can’t even remember the game, and I always get asked, but I can’t remember anything about it, to be honest. Maybe that was because of the stature of the game, I don’t know, but it just passed me by. Even now, big Matty will say something that happened in the game and I’m just like, ‘Did it?’ The minute we came out to warm-up on that play-off final, I just knew it was ours. The fans were already in the ground, none of their fans were in there, it was just bouncing straight beforehand, and you’re just warming up thinking, ‘This is ours.’ I just knew it.”
Irwin: “It was a huge game, as big a game as it could come as a one off – a chance to get into the Premier League. It’s where every club wants to be. At the time, it had been a long hard season. We had plenty of ups and downs, but post-Christmas we seemed to go on a bit of a run, and come the play-offs, we were certainly the form team. But, on a one-off, anything can happen. We were going into the game in fine fettle and plenty of confidence and felt we were on the up, while Sheffield United had a long season. They had been involved in cup competitions and felt like they should have gone up automatically being in that third position, so we were probably in a better mindset than them going into the game.”
Lescott: I think we drew 0-0 with them at home and 3-3 away from home towards the end of the season, and I think I gave away a stupid goal there. But going into the game, it was totally different than it was the year before when we lost to Norwich. We believed we were going to win this before we’d even got there. Even before we played Reading, we were booking hotels for family members although we’d only just gone into the play-offs, whereas the year before we were second and then dropped into them. It felt different going into the play-offs this year than it had the previous one.”
Getting ahead early doors
With such a big prize on the line, many fans would have expected a cagey opening to proceedings but it was anything but. Both sides went at it hammer and tongs from the start, producing several chances which went begging before Kennedy opened the scoring with just six minutes on the clock.
The Irish winger was picked out by Miller on the left-hand side, and with an opening to Paddy Kenny’s goal in front of him, picked his spot from 20 yards to fire a stunning low drive into the bottom corner of the net – leading to exuberant celebrations as Kennedy faced off and screamed into the nearby camera.
Kennedy: “I tell you what [the celebration] was. We had trained really hard that week. We’d trained here at Molineux for most of the week and I remember putting myself in a zone and shutting myself away from everybody. I was just being me and focusing. I’d had seven months out injured, so when the play-off final came around, I was completely done. I was cooked. I was so tired as I’d played 35 games on the bounce, and I knew going into those [play-off] games that I was out on my feet. All I was thinking was, ‘It’s three games, three games of your life, so just run around.’ I think, bizarrely, just because I was fortunate to get the opening goal, it just all came out and that’s what it was. It was the release of a build-up of nerves, frustration, energy, joy, of locking yourself in this emotional bubble for a week. It was like a bottle of pop that you shake, when you open it, it was ‘boom’. Unfortunately, it was only the seventh minute so it could easily have gone the other way. Although I had belief in myself, I needed constant reassurance. I remember the last day we trained at Molineux, it was the evening before we went to Wales and Shaun Newton came up to me and said, ‘You’re going to win us the play-off final.’ And I was like, ‘Ok…’ He said, ‘I’ve watched you training all week and you are in the zone.’ Maybe that was Newts knowing me and knowing that’s what I needed. When we score, he comes up to me – I won’t tell you what he said – but he basically says, ‘I told you. I told you,’ – with a few other things. But Newts was amazing for us that year and he got some really big goals and was a really good right winger, but he was a very mature player for his age. He knew the game, he understood the game, and was a really big character.”
Butler: “The interesting thing we did do was Dave wanted to get us to play out from the back and get his wingers involved, and if you look at all the goals, there was another play-off final at the Millennium the day before, and the pitch was horrendous. It might have been looking great from the stands, but they’d sprayed it with this green paint and it was horrendous. When we walked on the pitch, Dave just went, ‘Right, we’ll bypass the midfield and just get it to the front lads as quick as we can and we’ll play from there.’ That’s not Dave’s principles, but if you see a lot of the goals, it’s clear that they come from full-back areas, Blakey flicks it on and we just played the pitch better than what they did. Yeah, we had match winners in the team, but they did as well.”
Irwin: “I’ve worked under enough managers, and played in enough big games, to know that the first goal is always the most important. If you look back over years of finals, I think whoever scores the first goal tends to go on and win the game because the opposition maybe nervous and feel they have to throw the kitchen sink at it early and you can take advantage of that.”
***
Adding two more before half-time
The Blades continued to push throughout the first-half, but it was Wolves who pretty much put the game to bed inside the opening 45 minutes.
Nathan Blake added a second when he turned Ince’s flick on from a corner past Kenny from close range, before Miller – having set up Kennedy’s opener – beat the offside trap to divert a Shaun Newton cross into the net off his knee.
Miller: “At 2-0, we didn’t need to push on to win the game. When you’re 2-0, we could suck them in and try to hit them on the break and if we got a third, it was going to be a long, long way for them to get back. So, we didn’t need to do much, and the boys defended well. But also, you’re thinking, if they nick a goal, they’re right back in it, but the third just knocked the stuffing out of them. Looking back [at the third goal], I almost did my best to miss it! But it doesn’t matter how they go in, as long as they end up in the back of the net, that’s all that matters. I had to check for offside as well before celebrating because I thought I could have been offside as I was ahead of the players in front of me, but one of the guys behind me was playing me on. But the cross was great from Newts. Exactly where we want it as strikers, in the channel between the defenders and the goalkeeper, so all it needs is a touch. It was bang on half-time and going into the break 3-0 up, it was all over.”
Irwin: “The first-half was fantastic for us. Mark scored within 10 minutes, Blakey scored within 20 minutes and Kenny popped one in before half-time, so I don’t think you could ask for anything better than a 3-0 lead at half-time in a big game.”
Leading into the break
Even the most optimistic of Wolves supporters would not have expected their team to take a three-goal lead into the break.
The squad appeared to be split between those who believed that the job was done, such as Miller and Lescott, but Butler was one of a few players who knew that playing for Wolves was never simple, and if there was a team who could throw away this much of an advantage it would be the one in gold and black.
Miller: “At half-time we were walking in and you’re looking at the dressing room and thinking, ‘We’ve done it.’”
Lescott: “I don’t remember a thing Dave said to us at half-time. All I remember is smiling and thinking, ‘We’ve done it.’ I was just sitting in the dressing room thinking, ‘There’s no way we’re conceding four.’ It wasn’t even about them, it was conceding four. We were not conceding four goals that day. Not at all.”
Jones: “The lads just never thought they were going to lose this game. Even at half-time I went up to them and said they’ve got two options, they can go out and entertain or go out and bore the pants off everybody, and there was only one who wanted to go out and entertain – Blakey, but everybody else just shouted him down and just wanted to get the job done, which they did.”
Butler: “It was strange because you’re coming in 3-0 up and you’ve been in those rugby dressing rooms – they’re massive, absolutely huge dressing rooms. Dave’s got us all in, the starting 11 just in the corner and the other lads are kicking a ball around at the back, and he says, ‘Right, what do you want to do?’ We were like, ‘What do you mean, what do we want to do?’ He said, ‘There’s two ways of playing here, we can go out and settle for 3-0 or we can go and get the next goal and really kill the game.’ So, what did I do – go and give a penalty away inside the first five minutes to make it a bit interesting!”
Kennedy: “No word of a lie, I remember sitting there [at half-time] and I didn’t actually say a prayer, but I remember looking up to the roof, which was my heaven and saying, ‘Please don’t take this away from me.’ We were 3-0 up and the only thing you can do now is throw it away. The game’s done. It’s over. The only thing you can do now is throw it away, so I remember saying, ‘Please, God, please don’t take this away.’ And then 10 minutes into the second half they got a penalty, and I was like, ‘What are you doing to me?’”
***
Penalty drama
And then it happened. After taking such a commanding lead into the break, all their hard work could have been undone within the first 10 minutes of the second half. Butler was penalised for an apparent handball and referee Steve Bennett pointed to the penalty spot.
Up stepped Michael Brown, but having had such an impressive first-half display, Murray was not going to be beaten – guessing correct to dive to his left and push away the spotkick, before recovering quickly to deny the rebound.
Murray: “We’d been practicing penalties in the build-up to the game because we thought it might have gone to a shootout because we’d been pretty even when we’d played during the season, so I’d been practicing penalties with Bobby Mimms and all the guys behind. Dean Sturridge said he knew Michael Brown would want to go to the keeper’s left because he’d taken five or six penalties that season, so that’s why I showed him that little bit more. It was nice to have that moment.”
Kennedy: “I see Browny all the time, and he scored about 25 goals that season and he’d got about 10 penalties and remember thinking, ‘If he scores this, we’re in big trouble.’ Because you cannot lose from 3-0 down and at 3-1, you’ve got everything to lose and they’ve got everything to gain, but Matty made a great save. He’s a multi-millionaire because of that save!”
Irwin: “I’ve played in enough games to know that when you go in with a big lead, you tend to try and protect it whether you’re 1-0, 2-0 or 3-0 up. But Matt Murray had to pull off a number of great saves, no better than the penalty save which stopped them from getting huge momentum.”
Surviving a second-half Blades onslaught
The Blades had the majority of possession in the second half, but they were unable to find a way past Murray and his battle-hardened defence, with the keeper saving a Paul Peschisolido header, before pushing Michael Tonge free-kick onto the post.
Having been put under the cosh for so long, the Wolves players were counting down the minutes until the referee would blow the final whistle, leading to a nervous wait for the fans – and Sir Jack Hayward – in the stands.
Butler: “We were out and you’re still on the pitch and still walking on, but you’re thinking, ‘Are we actually 3-0 up?’ Because you’re thinking something is going to happen and we knew there was going to be five or ten minutes when they were going to blast at you and come for you. They got the penalty, and I gave Matt a living out of it, didn’t I? Matt owes me a lot! But he saved the penalty and then it was comfortable, but I remember looking at the clock and when five minutes of added time went up, and I thought, ‘We’re 3-0 up with five to go, that could end 5-3 to them.’ That was my mindset – a goal every minute. The Sheffield United fans are going and their side of the stadium is emptying, there was only about 3,000 left in their end, and I’m still going, ‘Something can happen here.’ You’re still thinking that. I know I shouldn’t be thinking that because I have Paul Ince in front of me, Denis Irwin and Joleon Lescott, Matt Murray and Lee Naylor – I’ve got good players around me, but I was still thinking that.”
Kennedy: “It’s weird because I don’t really remember the game. I remember the goal flying in, I remember half-time, and I remember the penalty. The game was on Sky a few weeks ago on those ‘vintage’ games, and I didn’t realise all the chances Sheffield United had that day and Matty pulled off an unbelievable save from a deflection in the first-half, saved a penalty, they’ve hit the post, there’s goalline clearances, and I didn’t realise until I watched it then – because I’d never watched the game back before – how much of a tough game it was.”
Miller: “The one thing I remember most from this squad, the boys just fought for each other. If someone managed to get past Nayls, there would be two or three boys there to dig him out. We just hounded them out and there was no way through us – and if they did, then we had that guy in the goal who, that day, was not going to be beaten. Not matter what happened, Matty was not going to be beaten that day.”
Irwin: “It was a case of all hands on deck in the last half-an-hour, but I’ve got to say that I’ve not played in many big games where I’ve been 3-0 up at half-time, but that was really a god-send. We defended very well, very stoutly as a team, and when they were running out of steam, we knew we were going to win it, but there’s nothing better than hearing that final whistle.”
***
The full-time whistle blows
As the Toaster banner said, the wait of 19 years, 13 days, 22 hours and 20 minutes all came to an end when Bennett put the whistle to his lips to signal Wolves’ time outside of the top-flight had come to an end.
The 14 long, painful years of purgatory in the second tier had also ended as the dream of Premier League promotion became a reality for a club that had perennially fallen short.
Kennedy: “I remember walking off at the Millennium Stadium thinking, ‘Nobody can ever take that away from you.’ Not me, but the club and the team, Dave and Sir Jack and the collective that we’d achieved and done. When you woke up tomorrow, it would be there. We were just lucky on the day. Everything just went in. We were fortunate on the day because everything went well for us.”
Jones: “I’ve said many times before, I don’t care who we would have played that day, the first 45 minutes we could have played anybody, the lads were really up for it and determined to get what they missed out on the year before. They got a lot of unwarranted stick from the year before, so our job as coaches was to just keep them focused and that was the easy part. If you watch them walking out, nobody was waving to the crowd, to their families, it was just sheer determination.”
Miller: “To win a game 3-0, although Matty had to produce a penalty save at the start of the second-half to keep it that way, otherwise it could have been nervy, but we go through it and it was only what that team deserved over the course of the season.”
Being part of Wolves history
The on-pitch celebrations continued off it for the proceeding days following the final. Promotion had not only brought a lift to the football club, but the whole of Wolverhampton as the city rejoiced in the success.
An open top bus around the city centre streets was the culmination in almost two decades of work from hundreds of people in getting Wolves back into the big time, as Jones wanted to celebrate not only the players who stepped out at Cardiff, but the whole playing squad and backroom staff.
Jones: “You don’t get it many times as a manager, but at half-time I had a glow in my belly because, I think, if they’d have scored the penalty, we’d have just gone up the other end and scored another. We were always confident about beating Sheffield United that year and I think it was the perfect stage for the players to perform and they did. I’ve got nothing but respect for all of them, and also for the ones that didn’t play. That was the hardest choice for me, either leaving them out or not getting a shirt, because we always felt as a staff nobody was going to beat us on the day.”
Miller: “We always knew we had that chance to be the players to take the club to the Premier League for the first time and back to the top-fight for the first time in 19 years. But that was the culmination of a great season and the squad of players that we had. Not just the starting 11, but Alex Rae, Adam Proudlock, the squad was so strong and there was a real belief and determination. But the lads were great. The experienced lads were massive for the younger boys and showing us what it took to be at the top level.”
Murray: “I’m blessed that I played in 2003 because it was the first promotion year. We got a lot of love even though we didn’t stay in the top league like Mick [McCarthy]’s team did, we didn’t stay in the top league like Nuno [Espirito Santo]’s team did. But because we gave everyone an unbelievable day out and the Premier League for the first time, so many fans still stop me to this day, whether they were kids, whether they were adults and tell me, ‘It was the best day of my life.’ They cried, they did this, they did that, and so to have played with people who meant so much to me and to have that moment that so many fans will look back on with so much fondness… If you would have told me at nine-years-old that I’m going to save a penalty in the play-off final, you’re going to dream of that. I was fortunate enough to get man of the match and that was nice, but I didn’t think about any of that. I was just playing the game, but when it stops at the end, it was wicked.”
Kennedy: “It’s really nice, but you’ve been in it a long time, it’s a team sport and it was great to be part of a great time. Just seeing the excitement of the play-offs and what it brings to the fans is great. I remember coming back to Molineux to do an interview on the pitch at half-time and I was getting lots of people saying they were at Cardiff, so you still get people reminding you now. And it’s lovely to hear that. The biggest compliment I can pay is that it’s equally the same for me to be part of that. It’s just as meaningful and rewarding for me as a player who was part of it than the fan who lived through it and shared it. It’s the same for all of the players.”
Naylor: “It was always the aim [to get to the Premier League] and play against the best, but it didn’t sink in until pre-season. Players started coming in and the amount of media that was around at the time, things get bigger and you get a lot more noticed about what you’re doing, and it goes on tenfold. That’s when you know you’re in the big league.”
***
Reflecting two decades on
It’s hard to believe one of the favourite games of a generation of Wolves supporters occurred 20 years ago, but the only event to be inducted into the Wolves Hall of Fame reignited the flame inside the Old Gold to go on to spend half of the following years in the Premier League.
But not only for fans, the day remains special to many of the players who will forever be immortalised as the men who brought top-flight football back to Molineux.
Murray: “To win it with the club that you love was amazing, to see the fans’ relief at the end was great, but when you’re doing it with your mates as well, it really was the best day of my career.”
Naylor: “For me, this game is right up there as the best ever. I’ve got best mates out of this team and this was one of the days of my life that will always be one of the best, especially the memories that I take from it. It’s right up there.”
Lescott: “It was a day I’ll never forget. It was the first time I experienced success and it was unreal. I was lucky enough to have other successes in my career after this, but this will never go away. The feeling of this game and the memories like Nayls said. I’ve made lifetime friends from this team, still today, and football is a weird thing, your paths cross again later on, and I’ll see some of the guys again years later, but we’ll still have this bond and these great memories that we share because of this game.”
Miller: “It was a great day and brilliant memories. It was a fantastic time and unbelievable that it was so long ago. Those years have flown by. To be honest, it was one of my best days in football, and it will always be up there because it was incredible. 70,000 at the Millennium Stadium, in a play-off final, being 3-0 up at half-time – it doesn’t get much better than that.”
