Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 v Preston North End 0

How do you motivate a sports team to perform at the optimum? I pondered this in the light of two articles which appeared in the press this week. The first by Matthew Syed was on the phenomenon that is Leicester City. He wrote “It is wrong to single out individuals. More than any other team I have seen this season the Foxes exceed the sum of their parts. They run for each other and they protect each other. They are a group of mostly decent players assembled at just £55m; yet as a team, lead by their kindly manager Claudio Ranieri, they have grown to improbable stature”.

A contrasting view came from Oliver Holt writing about the England rugby team following their win over Scotland last Saturday. “Let’s not kid ourselves. This was the same old England, dour and mediocre. Eddie Jones has made few alterations to the side he inherited. The...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 v Bolton Wanderers 2

Once upon a time Bolton Wanderers were, to coin the phrase du jour “a northern powerhouse”. At the height of their fame in the Fifties they could rely on the robust qualities of local talisman Nat Lofthouse to terrorise opposition defences and it was Lofthouse who lead them to their singular triumph a 1958 FA Cup triumph over Manchester United, albeit the side devastated by the Munich air disaster. In 1964 they relinquished top flight status becoming something of a boomerang club until 1995 when they rejoined the “elite”. In the ensuing years they managed to lure the likes of Youri Djorkaev and Jay Jay Okotcha to Burnden Park which was something of an oddity, given that their manager at the time was the dour route one exponent Sam Allardyce. Sad to say that since those heady days the only thing in which Bolton can now claim any...

Wolves 1 v Cardiff City 3

On my way to the ground I bumped into a knowledgeable sage and asked “How are we going to get on today?” “Cardiff are in disarray” came his reply. “Russell Slade is a third rate manager. The supporters don’t like him and want him out. I think we’ll win.” Now that the ninety minutes are done, if that’s disarray, then I’d like to know how you create it. In Craig Noone, Stuart O’Keefe and Anthony Pilkington, Cardiff had three diminutive souls who were comfortable on the ball, could pick out a pass and had an eye for goal. O’Keefe hit the bar, Noone scored two and Pilkington linked midfield with attack. On this showing alone, Cardiff were an accomplished unit and more than deserved their win.

Not that the first fifteen minutes would provide any clue of the defeat that would ultimately come, Wolves having the better of the opening exchanges with Jordan Graham...

Wolves 1 v Reading 0

Prior to this evening’s game Wolves had slipped to within four points of the relegation places. Two heavy defeats to opponents from Yorkshire added further pressure on Coach Jackett who I gather is currently on the receiving end of some social media opprobrium. Why we should bow to the influence of these people is a mystery but then memories of fifteen tweets scuppering Steve Bruce’s tilt at the Wolves’ Manager’s job possibly provides them with succour.

Social media aside Jackett needed a win if he was to restore much needed confidence. The task was achieved but whether Wolves deserved the victory was questionable. Reading dominated the second half, with at least 75% of the possession and more than enough chances to score. The second period was barely underway when Oliver Norwood struck an upright with a thunderbolt of a strike. And in the 70th minute Nick...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 v Leeds United 3

On Sunday 7th May 1972 I was wandering passed the pool in Tettenhall when I noticed a line of what looked like footballers walking off the Upper Green to a rather plush coach waiting on the A41. They looked familiar and indeed were since the day before I’d seen them on the television playing Arsenal in the FA Cup final. I had a double take when I realised that it was Leeds United. There in front of me were Johnny Giles, Billy Bremner, Allan Clarke et al. Even for callow youth of 13 it brought forth a “Bloody hell”.

They were of course here to play Wolves the following day, the result of which would decide the outcome of that season’s league championship. Needing a single point to deny Brian Clough’s Derby County the title what followed made Wolves, as Phil Morgan of the Express & Star delightfully put it, “not only the best team in...

Wolves 1 v Nottingham Forest 1

Famous for lace, DH Lawrence and a bloke called Robin Hood, Nottingham is also home to two football teams, a test match cricket ground and a half decent rugby union side. Adding to the sporting pedigree are Torvill and Dean - who were born in the City - but I’m not so sure that skating around an ice rink to the ever rising clamour of Ravel’s Bolero strictly counts as a sport. More ballet on skates.

Balletic is not a word one might make use of to describe the evening’s encounter. Workmanlike and functional were probably more suitable. Neither keeper was particularly stretched in open play and both goals came from set pieces.

It was the visitors who started the brighter with Nelson Oliveira and Ben Osborn looking lively. But on one of their rare forays into opposition territory in minute 14 Jordan Graham, who for all his trickery has a propensity to go...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 v Milton Keynes Dons 0

Milton Keynes Dons rolls off the tongue with all the elegance of a Jeremy Vine Passo Doble. They also play in white though as one sage acknowledged they are not (expletive deleted) Real Madrid. In that they fielded a side containing eleven players they are ostensibly a football team. But if this performance is a bell weather for how they normally play then manager Karl Robinson is a man of limited ambition. More telling perhaps is that he has been in post five and a half years. It took his charges all of seventy minutes to fashion their first shot albeit a speculative effort from 25 yards. They would have two further efforts before referee Nigel Miller finally brought an end to our collective misery. This was football for the insomniac.

But as Jeremy Vine well knows, it takes two to tango and Wolves were far from blameless. Though...

So they have finally done it. Following weeks of media speculation and ire Ian Richie and the RFU have parted company with England Head Coach Stuart Lancaster. Though not a surprise, there is sliver of sadness as a veil is drawn over his tenure. The quiet Cumbrian was always regarded as a man of integrity, a man who had successfully restored England’s standing following the tawdry exploits in the World Cup campaign of 2011. In so doing he achieved a lot, but – and it’s a rather big but – he was unable to marry those heightened values with improved performance on the pitch. And in a results driven world convincing one’s paymasters to retain faith in your services when you are not winning games and championships was always going to be a big ask.

For me it was the build up to the world cup clash v Wales that synthesised all that was wrong about Lancaster’s thinking. Throughout this...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 v Burnley 0

Boomerang is possibly a tag one can attach to Burnley FC. Too good for the Championship, not good enough for the Premier League. West Bromwich Albion used to be a boomerang club but appear now to be a more permanent fixture in the Premier League. Bolton Wanderers used to be a boomerang club but appear now to be a more permanent fixture in the Championship. Whether boomerang can be attached to Wolves is debatable. Like the Duke of York they went up, down, up, down, down, down and then up where they appear to be currently stalled. How would they therefore cope with the visiting boomerang albeit one on its way down but still third in the league and unbeaten in seven?

The answer – more than comfortably, though the visitors should have gone ahead within two minutes of the start when Andre Gray was one on one with Emilio Martinez only to see his shot...

New Zealand 34 v Australia 17

Two weeks ago I nailed my colours to an Australian mast, a rejuvenated pack, the devastating pace of their backs and their heart (the thirteen man heroics v Wales) convincing me that they would go all the way. That day I literally posted my blog unaware that with twenty minutes of their quarter final v Scotland still to go, Australia were very much on the back foot. That they should ultimately scrape through by the slenderest of margins and, as we all know, with the aid a dodgy final minute penalty suggested that my support for their cause might be a tad premature. That impression continued into the semi final where they struggled against Argentina only killing off the game (albeit with ten minutes still to go) with a final try that came as a result of a forward pass.

Whatever the question marks hanging over their route to the final they were there and...