Every Thursday afternoon, former Wolves midfielder Alan Ainscow is part of a group of players who used to represent another of his former clubs Everton, who meet up for a coffee and a chinwag at a cafe in Ormskirk.
“We’ll have a brew and a chat, just chew the cud you know, just so everyone is kept in the loop,” he reveals.
“There are usually maybe 10 or 11 of us, including the likes of Joe Royle and John Hurst, and it’s always good to catch up – it gets us out of the house for a couple of hours!
“We’ll also have a little bet around the Everton and Liverpool games on the weekend, just guessing the score and so on, and having a bit of craic about what might happen.”
This week, that pre-match discussion will therefore feature two of Ainscow’s former clubs as Wolves travel to face Everton at Goodison Park on Saturday afternoon.
For very different reasons, his time with both weren’t the most memorable of his extensive playing days – and any personal career highlights reel would include far more action from his spells with Blackpool, Birmingham and Blackburn.
But what both Wolves and Everton fans could always rely on with Ainscow is that he left everything out there on the pitch. He was one of those players who would give us all, blood, sweat and tears, to do his best for the team. Whatever their fortunes and whatever their results.
That sort of attitude and focus has also been one which he has sadly been required to draw on in later life, through a series of different health challenges.
He is living with prostate cancer, having gone public on his 2013 diagnosis to raise awareness amongst men of potential symptoms, and also needed to have a stent fitted after suffering a heart attack three years ago, just prior to lockdown.
We speak just after he has completed his daily exercise routine as he recovers from knee replacement surgery a couple of weeks ago.
Ainscow, who turned 70 last month, appears to be dealing with life’s hurdles with the same sense of unassuming determination as that which he carried throughout his football career.
“It’s just life, isn’t it?” he says.
“You get to my age and we are all often talking about this sort of thing and people not being well or struggling with something.
“It was ten years ago that I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer and I’ve been on different drugs and I still have an injection every 12 weeks.
“I was on a trial for a few years but had to come off that after the heart attack, but fingers crossed everything seems to be ok.
“You just have to get on with it, keep waking up in the morning and keep going and getting out and about.”
And the memories certainly remain firmly imprinted on the Ainscow consciousness.
Memories of a lengthy career spent largely in the top two divisions of English football, comprising over 500 appearances at senior level.
And which, even if his time with Wolves was far from the most successful in terms of the club’s results and seemingly inexorable plunge towards obscurity, were still enjoyable enough in terms of getting the chance to achieve his childhood dream of playing football.
It’s a dream which might never have come to fruition had he had been successful in an interview to be an apprentice at a printing factory after coming out of school in Bolton without any O-levels.
Having not got the job, he returned to school to re-sit his exams, also believing that representing Lancashire at football might help attract the previously uncaptured attention of scouts from the professional game.
Still, the continuing silence was deafening in that respect, and so, the trademark Ainscow persistence came into play, as he explains.
“A mate who I was at school with lived next door to a guy called Roy Hartle, who had played for Bolton and was scouting for Blackpool.
“I was badgering my mate, pestering him for weeks and weeks, to go and ask him if I could have a trial and, eventually, he knocked on Roy’s door.
“He said he would come down and watch me, and after that he got me a trial for Blackpool’s ‘B’ team.
“After a few games, there were two teams selected for a final trial at Bloomfield Road, from where eight players were picked to be apprentices, and shortly afterwards I was sent a telegram to say that I was one of them.
“It was always said that my brother was a better player than me, but I was adamant that I was going to become a pro footballer – and that was it!
“I just wasn’t going to give up.”
By this time, at 17, Ainscow was given a year’s contract as an apprentice. Before he even managed to turn pro the following summer, he had played in what was only the second ever Anglo Italian Cup final as Blackpool, who had just been relegated from the First Division, took on Bologna, who had just finished fifth in Serie A, on their home turf.
The year was 1971, Blackpool had a certain John Burridge in goal at the age of 19, but for Ainscow, without even a league appearance to his name, starting the game which finished in a 2-1 win, after extra time, was a big step.
“It was a baptism of fire but what an experience,” he acknowledges.
“It was only a few years later that I found out I could have got the club into a whole lot of trouble!
“At 17, technically I was still underage and they needed my parental consent for me to travel, which they didn’t get.
“Still, I don’t think anyone will be looking at that now!”
Blackpool, and Ainscow, reached the final again the following season, losing 3-1 to AS Roma at the Stadio Olimpico, and, as the Seventies progressed, he became a key feature in the Seasiders engine room, regularly chipping in with goals and chalking up a double century of appearances.
That led to a move to Birmingham City where, after initially being relegated, Ainscow was part of a promotion-winning squad of 1979/80, then moving on to Everton as one of Howard Kendall’s first batch of signings, hailed as ‘the magnificent Seven’.
He scored on his debut – against Birmingham – but having started the first eight or so games of the season, a fixture against Notts County, when Kendall actually picked himself to play, put a real dent in his Everton ambitions.
“I had started pretty well, but in that game, there was a challenge from Brian Kilcline which ended with him being sent off, and me being carried off – that’s probably all you need to know.
“I was out for about 16 to 18 weeks with knee ligament damage, and by the time I was back, Alan Irvine had been brought in as a right-sided midfielder and he was playing very well.
“That was the hard thing about being at Everton, getting yourself in a situation where you are at a really top club but it was kind of taken away from me, through no fault of my own.”
Ainscow did make some further appearances towards the end of his second season at Goodison, but, by this time, Everton had plans to sign Trevor Steven, and their domination of English football was just around the corner.
And so, Ainscow headed out for a year in Hong Kong, where, as one of five overseas players in the Eastern AA squad, he was the only one to stick it out for the complete 12 months.
They did win the country’s main cup competition, but there were issues over payments, and a year later, he was heading back to England as a free agent.
But when it comes to difficulties with contracts and getting paid, it was very much out of the frying pan and into the fire as he checked in at Wolves, a club locked in the middle of financial tribulations which included a four-year period where the club twice nearly went out of business.
“The club was in a mess in a lot of ways,” Ainscow recalls of his arrival in the summer of 1984.
“At one stage, it got to a point where they were paying us in cash because they owed money to the bank so they couldn’t go through them.
“It then got to a point where they were a bit late with payments and stuff like that.
“It’s funny really because when I was having issues in Hong Kong, I was telling them that this would never happen in England – you would sign your contract and get your payment.
“Then I went home to join Wolves and exactly the same thing happened!”
Life on the pitch was equally as chaotic and treacherous as the financial situation off it. Any problems and challenges Wolves may face on and off the pitch at the current time are nothing in comparison to those from 40 years ago.
Having been promoted under Graham Hawkins in 1982/83, a lack of funds to strengthen led to immediate relegation, and Tommy Docherty was in as manager for the return to the second tier.
Still though there was very little in the kitty, which led to a fairly unbalanced squad which struggled, despite a reasonably positive opening day and debut for Ainscow in a 2-2 draw with Sheffield United.
“I remember there were some decent players at Wolves at the time – Tommy Langley, Tony Evans, Alan Dodd – and Andy King came in the following year,” he reflects.
“Budgie (John Burridge), who had been in goal, was still around for a bit before moving on but that meant Tim Flowers got his chance, and we all saw what he went on to achieve in his career.
“I just think we were missing out on maybe two or three players, you know? Rather than go out and sign people, the club opted to make do with some of the younger lads who maybe just weren’t quite ready.
“So often we just couldn’t get a goal, and then, no matter how you play, it becomes so difficult when it is backs to the wall and things overtake you just a little bit.
“Tommy Doc was perhaps a little bit past his managerial best as well, and the way things were done with training and selections I am not sure his heart and soul were completely in it.
“All we could do as players was put a shift in on the pitch, but sometimes that shift just isn’t good enough, and sometimes, as a team, you are just not good enough.
“I still look back and think it was a decent set of lads, and you couldn’t knock anyone for not trying, but we were always a little bit short.
“Just as you can get into a habit of winning, you can get into a habit of losing, and I look back now and again at a few of the old programmes – the ‘Molinews’.
“Looking down at the results there was a lot of L, L, L, L, D, D, L with a very rare W in there from time to time.
“You can see why we were in so much trouble!”
Ainscow’s not wrong.
Despite a couple of early season victories, including a Mick McCarthy own goal in a 2-0 win against Manchester City, there were five successive defeats before Wolves failed to win at all between November 24th and April 8th. A total of 21 games, which consisted of six draws and 15 defeats.
The inevitable relegation followed, as it did the following campaign, despite the arrivals of King and an initial goalscoring impact from Neil Edwards.
Ainscow actually left in the December of his second season, having initially been denied the chance to move on, his contract was terminated a couple of weeks before Christmas.
The travelling – a four-hour daily round trip for training – had become too much, but no one could ever accuse the midfielder not giving his all, despite the circumstances.
On his 70th birthday, Ainscow’s children handed over a special book which they had put together after rifling through his memorabilia collection of cuttings, contracts, and stories where he had got into trouble with referees!
“It’s fantastic, just lovely,” was the response from the man himself.
Included was a picture of Ainscow with Docherty after landing the Players’ Player of the Year Award, one of several he received for that 84/85 campaign supplemented by different supporters’ clubs.
His six goals in all competitions also made him joint top-scorer with Evans. He certainly put a shift in.
“I always gave my all but that’s because I enjoyed playing football, so I always wanted to give my best,” he insists.
“It was unfortunate how things were at Wolves, and how they turned out, but I did everything I could.
“We all know Wolves is a massive club, they had been before with winning trophies and it probably ended up becoming a bit of a sleeping giant.
“But it’s one they have managed to resurrect in recent years.
“When I was there, I remember that lovely new stand across the way, but much of the rest of the stadium being closed due to safety reasons.
“It was embarrassing really, when you were trying to generate a bit of atmosphere and spirit and home advantage.
“But look at it now – it’s an absolutely fantastic stadium and it has really turned around.”
Ainscow moved on to better things – well at least better fortunes – on departing Molineux.
A trial at Blackburn led to a contract offer from boss Bobby Saxton, which then led to a couple of play-off campaigns in the Championship equivalent, and a Full Members Cup success beating Charlton at Wembley.
There followed a year spent with Rochdale before “the calls stopped” and he moved into non-league, and then, ultimately, a new life post-football.
“The money then was very different to now and I had to get out there and get a job, to pay the mortgage and to pay the bills,” Ainscow acknowledges.
To that end, he has been involved in several different jobs, from being a postman to running a newsagents and working at a sports centre.
Much of the time since hanging up his boots has been spent as a delivery driver for a fruit and veg company, certainly up until his cancer diagnosis a decade ago which prompted a change of pace and lifestyle.
But still, alongside a busy family life – he and wife Paula have no fewer than 12 grandchildren – there is that love of football and desire to keep in close touch with the fortunes of his former clubs.
“Yes, I still follow football, checking out the results and the highlights, especially when it comes to my former clubs like Wolves.
“I always like to keep interested, and feel a bit closer to those clubs who I have played for.”
When football has been such a major part of your life, it will always remain so.
And that is no different for those former heroes who will get together today – and every Thursday – to reflect on the past and discuss the present and the future.
Including – in what is already an early-season fixture of some significance, how Wolves will get on against Everton on Saturday.
