When former Wolves director John Harris married his wife Margaret, Billy Wright brought the couple a present in a Tesco carrier bag.
It was a precious England cap, one of his record-breaking 105. An incredible gift for the happy couple.
When Laura, the young daughter of Wolves chairman Jonathan Hayward, opened up a new autograph book for Wright to kick off, he told her that she was starting with a ‘nobody’, and, ‘it can only get better from here’!
Former Wolves striker Ted Farmer once attended a Lord’s Taverners cricket match at Stourbridge with his family, only for his young daughter to be crying in her pram due to the noise from a band playing by the side of the pitch.
Wright politely asked them to stop. Which they did.
And when Steve Bull and Andy Thompson had the television on rather too loudly into the early hours on a pre-season trip, and Wright, in the room next door, asked them to turn it down, the next day it was he – Wright – that apologised.
Tuesday marked what would have been the 100th birthday of the Wolves and England legend, one of football’s finest, and the Express & Star marked the occasion by looking back on some of Wright’s remarkable achievements, as well as the informative words of Steve Gordos about what exactly it was like to watch the great man play.
And now? Well, as a follow-up to those excellent reflections, this is a look back at the life and times of William Ambrose Wright CBE through the eyes of others.
Through a couple of young team-mates who looked up to him for inspiration, a couple of Wolves legends who followed in his illustrious footsteps, a couple of leading figures who were with him on the club’s Board and, perhaps best of all, a devoted fan who remains immensely touched to have a treasured memento which he always brings out for special occasions. A heart as gold as the team which he graced.
‘People will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did,’ begins the famous quote from American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
‘But they will never forget how you made them feel.’
And, how did Billy Wright make people feel?
Two prolific Wolves goal-grabbers who followed in Wright’s footsteps as Molineux legends are unequivocal.
“Billy was a lovely guy, very quiet, unassuming,” says John Richards.
“He didn’t like to talk much about himself, he was more interested in other people and what was going on at Wolves after him.
“Anyone you speak to will always speak very highly of Billy and rightly so – he was a fantastic man.”
“Billy was a very good friend of mine and a lovely man,” echoes Steve Bull, who was helped by Wright to move into the media at the end of his record-breaking Wolves career.
“He was a gentleman, on and off the pitch, and just a great bloke in every way.”
For Hayward, who became chairman of Wolves in 1992, it was a huge honour sitting on the Board with Wright alongside his father Sir Jack, and Harris and his father Jack.
“Of all the many different things that happened as Wolves, and indeed the stressful aspects, Billy was the most wonderful person to have ever met,” Hayward recalls.
“He was quite special in every way, an absolute delight.
“He was always the first to ring the family up on Christmas Day when we were farming up in Northumberland.
“And the story about him signing Laura’s autograph book and calling himself a ‘nobody’ just sums him up. She was very young at the time and I remember having to tell her it probably wasn’t going to get much better than that and that it was one of the most precious autographs she could have in the world!
“I will also never forget doing a duet with Billy, singing Moon River on a karaoke machine at the end of one of the pre-season tours – a very find memory and one I couldn’t quite believe was taking place!”
Wright’s playing career has, perhaps more so than his karaoke skills, quite rightly been documented in infinite detail and with so much respect and admiration down the years.
It’s a magnificent story which has been well-told.
How, born in Ironbridge, he first came to Wolves after answering a newspaper advert at the age of 14, and when manager Major Frank Buckley felt he was too small to forge a career at the club, trainer Jack Davies fought his corner – and he stayed.
How, then transferred from right half (right midfield) to centre half, and using a prodigious leap to defy those lack of inches, and an incredible ability to read the game, he became captain for both club and country.
“I decided early on that captaincy is the art of leadership, not dictatorship,” said the often quiet and mild-mannered personality. “Respect is the hardest thing for a captain to come by and the easiest to lose.”
How he then led Wolves to the only three top-flight titles in their history in those fabulous Fifties, as well as the 1949 FA Cup, and, proudly wearing the Three Lions, became the first in world football to achieve 100 international caps, eventually finishing on 105 appearances for England, 90 of those wearing the armband.
Wright remained indebted to the work of his managers, Buckley and the equally legendary Stan Cullis, for the successes of his career, and was part of that never-to-be-surpassed group of Wolves players whose history and legacy will never be forgotten.
But also, as Wright came to the end of his own career, he too helped others, as younger talent emerged to the fore.
“I was Billy’s boot boy, and he was great with me,” said winger Terry Wharton.
“He told me later on that when he became Arsenal manager, he put a bid in for me but Stan (Cullis) wouldn’t let me go.
“He also once asked me to go along to Walsall Town Hall and judge a beauty contest with him for which he gave me a half a lager and a bunch of flowers to take home – he was a smashing chap was Bill.”
For Farmer, a striker, he was able to learn not just from Wright’s advice and guidance but also from the example of lining up against him.
“We used to play a practice match before every season, first team against reserves and ‘Colours against Whites’ with the different kits, and, as a young striker, I would come up against Billy,” Farmer recalls.
“I was an inch or two taller than him, 10 yards faster, physically stronger, and yet I couldn’t get near the man.
“His timing was absolutely brilliant and he knew everything about the game – he didn’t go after the ball but the ball would come to him.
“Billy Wright is the finest footballer I have ever seen or played with, there is no doubt about that.”
Farmer also had first-hand experience of Wright’s mischievous streak and sense of humour.
Having hung up his boots, and before the four years spent as Arsenal boss, Wright was in charge of England Under-23s, for whom Farmer earned two caps and scored four goals, including a hat trick.
“There was one game at Fulham when I scored a couple in front of Billy and he came to see me to shake my hand and told me I had cost him a fiver,” says Farmer.
“He said he had bet someone that I would score a hat trick.
“Then when I did get a hat trick in that England game against Holland, when I came off, he told me the first goal was offside!”
It was after those spells in coaching that Wright made a move into television, becoming head of ATV Sport in the Midlands and helping to bring through broadcasting success stories such as Gary Newbon and Nick Owen.
And it was during this time that he faced one of his biggest challenges away from football – a battle with alcohol.
Away from his loving family – wife Joy Beverley of Beverley Sisters fame – and children Vince, Vicky and Babette – spending five or six nights alone in an apartment in Birmingham or working on the after-dinner circuit, he became a heavy drinker, in stark contrast to the extreme discipline of his previous career.
It’s not something he shied away from mentioning – Joy also felt it important to address in Norman Giller’s ‘A Hero for All Seasons’ extensive official biography of Billy – and Vicky included it in the two shows dedicated to her father which she delivered at Molineux and Cannock’s Prince of Wales Theatre.
Because, as with all the other obstacles faced in football and indeed in life, Wright overcame it. With that unswerving support from his family, he returned to quenching his thirst with nothing more than mineral water, which paved the way for one of the biggest thrills of his existence, just a few years before his passing.
Becoming a director of Wolves.
Thanks to a combination of then chairman Jack Harris bringing Wright back into the fold by inviting him to games, and Sir Jack Hayward then taking over the club in 1990, he was asked onto the Board.
“It would have been one of the most important things Dad did to ask Billy to come onto the Board,” Jonathan Hayward recalls.
“Billy thought it was a huge honour but Dad thought it was an even bigger honour to be able to ask him to do it.
“With everything that we were doing at that time, Billy just gave it extra prominence by being there and adding his knowledge and experience.
“When he travelled with the team for example, he was held in such high esteem, and the whole process of Billy being there rubbed off positively on everyone.”
“Billy would go to all of the away games and I remember a lot of those trips when we’d get back to Molineux in the early hours of the morning,” adds Harris.
“It would be the early hours and he would then have a drive back down to London but he would tell me that when he got home, he would always cook himself some beans on toast – he loved it!
“He was just a normal guy, so modest, there was another time when we’d played at Nottingham Forest and ‘Cloughie’ (Brian Clough) came running out as we were leaving – his face lit up and he grabbed Billy and gave him a big kiss!
“I remember too when the Queen came to officially open the redeveloped Molineux, and I was one down from Billy in the line when she arrived.
“The Queen was walking along being very pleasant with everyone and she got to Billy and, straightaway she said, ‘I recognise that face, I know who you are!’
“Wherever you went everyone knew Billy, he was just a legend, wasn’t he?”
He was indeed. And his influence was far-reaching.
When Graham Turner was considering the Wolves job, at a time when the club – and Molineux – were close to ruin, part of his motivation was being a fan, and having Wright as his hero.
He had actually written a letter to him previously, and received a signed response.
And, when another GT, England midfielder Geoff Thomas, was attracting plenty of topflight and high-profile interest when he came to Molineux to discuss the final stages of a proposed move from Crystal Palace.
“I met Billy on the day I signed which was amazing because he was an icon of football and not just Wolves,” said Thomas.
“To have people of his stature walking around the club with that sense of history made me feel like Wolves were going places at that time.”
For Bull and company, the feeling was exactly the same, even though he once feared he and room-mate Thompson had over-stepped the mark as ‘noisy neighbours’.
“We were away one pre-season and I think it was the last night of the trip when we’d done a lot of hard work so myself and Thommo were having a few beers and had Sky Sports on the telly,” Bull explains.
“It was probably blasting away a bit too loud, and Billy, who was next door, knocked the door at 2 o’clock in the morning asking if we could turn it down a bit.
“Of course we did, we hadn’t even realised, and the next day when we were doing a bit of light training before flying home, Billy was stood there with his arms folded.
“I thought we were in some trouble, and we were trying to avoid him, but he came after us and he asked if he could have a word.
“As it was, it was Billy that wanted to apologise for knocking our door in the early hours, even though it was us that was in the wrong, but that’s just the sort of guy he was.”
It was that hands-on approach from Wright, both in his role as a director, and also in helping set up Wolves’ Former Players Association in 1988, which showed the depth of his feeling to all things gold and black.
He sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 70 in September 1994 – his ashes were sprinkled on the Molineux turf – but his legacy? That will never be forgotten.
“I got to know Billy more when he was working for the TV, but we all knew of his achievements – to us in Wolverhampton he was the top man, wasn’t he?” says Richards.
“I think it was so important when he was invited onto the Board because it just kept that connection between former players and current players.
“Him passing away was such a sad loss, and it was after that I was asked by Sir Jack to become a director and follow in Billy’s footsteps, which will always be such an incredible honour.”
Wright’s funeral was, like Sir Jack’s almost two decades later, a day when Wolverhampton – the whole of Wolverhampton – came out to pay its respects.
The rain teemed down, but that didn’t stop thousands lining the streets, with Hayward and Harris among the pallbearers carrying Wright’s coffin into St Peter’s Church.
“I remember it as a sad day but also a reflection on what a wonderful city Wolverhampton is, with so many people coming out for Billy on that day,” Hayward recalls.
A century on from his birth, Wright’s memory remains prominent.
There is still a stand named after him and that magnificently imposing statue sculpted by James Butler – surely one of the very best in football – continues to welcome everyone through Molineux’s front door.
Graham Hughes, the former Wolves historian who passed away in 2021, and who also has a Molineux stand named after him, was a fervent and dedicated disciple of all things Billy Wright.
Forever proud to have been at Wright’s history-making 100th appearance, for England against Scotland at Wembley in 1959, Hughes would regularly lead visitors to the photograph of him leading the team out, hanging in ‘Billy’s Boot Room’, another enduring tribute at the stadium.
Also involved in the design process for that incredible statue, Hughes would constantly refer to Wright’s selfless nature and desire to deflect any personal praise.
“For Billy Wright, it was always about the team and never about him.”
For Wolves fans however, many held Wright as their hero, and for one in particular, there remains a poignant memento which he will always treasure.
Brian Woodall, now 82, was a 14-year-old when one of six pupils from Dudley Grammar School selected to receive a coaching session from Wright, Jimmy Dunn, Bert Williams, Bill Shorthouse, Jesse Pye and Terry Springthorpe.
Then becoming a regular at Molineux to watch him play, they met again in 1982 when, as part of his lifelong association with Dudley Town, Woodall was present when Wright officially opened the floodlights.
More recently, Woodall attended the two tribute evenings put on by Vicky whom, prior to sadly passing away through cancer last year, had delivered a wonderful gesture of her own via Brian’s daughter Suzanne.
“Being coached by Billy and those other Wolves players was a fantastic experience all those years ago – he was such a great player which was proved by getting those 105 caps,” says Woodall.
“Myself and Suzanne got on really well with Vicky and her daughter Kelly, and I have put together a book with all the cuttings about Billy.
“Vicky then gave me one of Billy’s ties with a lovely note attached, telling me to ‘wear it with pride’, which I certainly do.
“Any Wolves function I attend I wear the tie and show it off, and it’s something that is very special coming from such a special player.”
The tie lives on and so too does Wright’s legacy. A man small in stature who went on to become immense in influence for club and country.
And he was one of Wolves’ own.
