Google Bruce Lee and Wolverhampton together and, surprisingly, not much pops up. There’s an interesting academic article by the Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Wolverhampton University: The Enduring Legacy of Bruce Lee and that’s about your lot. However, I’d suggest that back in the Winter of ‘77 the Kung Fu idol was having quite a profound influence on the good denizens of the Molineux South Bank.
First, a backtrack to a sunny day on the August of 76 and a second division home match v Wolves. Watching from the relative safety of the Trent End, the level of violence on the Bridgford End was beyond anything I’d seen at the City Ground. Segregation was still sketchy in those days and the old terrace turned into a battle-ground. This was still the days of the Mad Squad (“United, Will Never Be Defeated”), still a mix of old school skins, donkey jackets, emerging punks and soul-boy influenced wearers of bags and three star jumpers.For the fashionistas, the three star jumper was a synthetic affair, highly flammable, with a flappy collar and a waist band. A hang-over from the Wigan Casino. You could get a (nasty) ‘Notts (sic) Forest’ one off Sneinton Market. Nasty but still very desirable. Dave Stacey had one and he was something of a fashion icon and lady-magnet in the second year of big school. He was big into Roxy and Bowie when the rest of us were still into the Wombles. Respect. Must remember to come back to DS later – remind me!
Back to August ‘76 though. A continual procession of bloodied victims trudged round the pitch to escape the mayhem as a veritable cloud of bricks and bottles flew to and fro. Wolves won this one 3-1 and looked a really good side.
Onwards to January ’77. Forest were in with an outside shot at promotion, Wolves still looked hot favourites, along with Bolton. Dad offered to take the Saluki Bronze Mark III Cortina (very desirable, the advantage of a Dad who was a travelling rep with a company car) over to the Black Country. Dad, Dave B, his sister Christine and myself made our way from car park towards Molineux, perhaps foolishly all scarved-up; a lot of threats but nothing more though.
Molineux was (is) an iconic ground. We’d been brought up on tales of exotic floodlit matches in the 50s against Lev Yashin’s Moscow Dynamo and the magnificence of Billy Wright, by now the regular football correspondent on ATV news. There was a good sized terrace – the South Bank – and the old Molineux Street Stand with it’s zig-zag roof always looked great. A proper ground.
We’d not been in long before we realised there was a lot of ironmongery and assorted hardware flying across at us. About 5 minutes in, Dave nonchalantly turned to me and presented me with an exotic looking object. “Look at this.” Said object was in the form of a metal star, sharp at the edges and embossed with the initials KF.
“Where did you get that, Dave?”
“I found it in my arm, Pete.”
“What is it?”
“I think it must belong to some bloke called Kendo Forehead.”
Dave was quirky. The star, properly called a Shuriken had embedded itself to about quarter of an inch into Dave’s arm, but he seemed non-plussed, amused if anything.
And that was about it. The afternoon continued in much the same slightly menacing way, but with no major incidents. Wolves won 2-1, seemingly a massive nail in the Forest promotion coffin, and Kendo Forehead took his place in the mythology of a bunch of daft schoolboys.
Mr Russel: “Who’s flicking those beads of mercury at me?”
Daft schoolboys: “It must be Kendo Forehead, sir.”
I like Wolves. I like the ground, the kit (though is it my ageing eyes or is the recent colour not quite right – too orangey?) and the accent. I like Noddy Holder and Robert Plant. Wolves seem a proper club in a similar way to Leeds. I like that they atoned for doing the double over us that season by winning away at Bolton to secure promotion for a Forest squad already on a flight to Majorca. I can even forgive them the 1980 League Cup Final debacle. They’ve been through it all and nearly disappeared. More recently, they seemed on a level with Forest. Since then, they have gone on to establish themselves as a stable Premier League club, playing an attractive brand of football in an atmospheric stadium. They’ve even taken a lead towards safe standing, with rail seats in the South Stand. Last night, they demolished us 4-0, a result we’re apparently supposed to think was actually quite good. Good grief.
Oh, Dave Stacey? Same season, Sheffield United at home, stood on the old East Stand terrace. Dave was resplendent, as ever, in cream Oxford bags (6 button waistband, long and wide enough to cover his green platforms perfectly) and aforementioned Forest 3-star jumper. A goal. A beauty from Terry Curran in a 6-1 demolition – see Youtube link below for brief highlights. A surge. Dave, fashion icon and all-round super-dude, disappears right down to the bottom of the terrace, comes grinning back through the gap that had opened up. Trouserless, but for the waistband, which sat atop a pair of dashing y-fronts. Laying, intact, perfectly leg-shaped and parallel , on the terrace, the bottom 99% of a pair of cream bags. Fair play to Dave, he laughed, saw the match out and took the remnants home for his Mum to sew back together.
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