Since linking up at Wolves, Steve Froggatt and David Kelly have been friends for the best part of 30 years.
And yet, they only spent one season as team-mates, at Molineux three decades ago in 1994/95.
That was the season which started with Froggatt scoring a winner on his debut despite Wolves being outplayed by Mark McGhee’s Reading, and finished with Kelly taking a right hook from John McGinlay in the second leg of the play-off semi-finals.
Football, eh? You never quite know what’s around the corner. And where was VAR when it was needed?
“We’ve been pals since the day Froggy walked in at Molineux,” says Kelly.
“I’m not sure it’s because we’re similar characters – I’d say we’re completely opposite.”
“We do both like taking the p***,” Froggatt interjects.
“That has never changed.
“As well as being good friends we had businesses together for many years, and always had each other backs.
“We got on well in the dressing room but in business and life you need to back each other times ten to what it was like in football.
“Things have sometimes got a bit heavy but we have that friendship and respect that always means we will look after each other.”
The pair are chatting ahead of taking to the stage for one of the Cleveland Arms’ excellent Wolves nostalgia nights, compèred
by the ever-entertaining host, Matt Murray.
It may be three decades since the days they graced the hallowed turf of Molineux, but, judging by the steady stream of fans who come over for a quick word or a signature, their contributions have not been forgotten.
Wolves, often agonisingly, failed to achieve the much-cherished ambition of promotion to the Premier League during their respective spells, and Kelly is a self-confessed West Bromwich Albion fan whilst Froggatt spent his formative years with Aston Villa.
But neither those promotion near misses, nor Midlands rivalries, seem to have damaged the affection with which they are held by the vast majority of the Molineux fanbase.
That, in part, may well be due to their status as what, Kelly’s former Republic of Ireland team-mate and ex-Wolves boss Mick McCarthy would describe as, ‘proper blokes’.
Left everything out there every time they crossed the white line, no quarter was ever given or asked for, and also open and approachable away from the pitch, recognising the importance of football, and footballers, to the local community. Proper blokes.
“We are all working class people, deep down,” Kelly explains.
“That is what Wolves is, a working class club, like all of them across the Midlands.
“If you make sure that you give your best every time you go out on the pitch, then they will accept you.
“Wolves was a brilliant time for me.
“As everyone knows, I am an Albion fan, but I was always treated really fairly by everyone at Wolves.”
It is at this point that Froggatt reminds his mate that he kissed the Wolves badge after scoring with a header in a Black Country derby.
“A goal’s a goal,” Kelly replies with a laugh!
Before Froggatt too looks back on his Molineux memories with much fondness.
“Wolves was my first big move, having come through the ranks at Villa, and that’s a really big thing,” he explains.
“I think when you are at a club where you have come through, as great as it was for me at Villa, you probably never quite get the same level of respect as players who are brought in, and, with Wolves, it felt like I had earned the move.
“I had one really bad injury which took out a chunk of my career, but apart from that I loved every minute.
“Both my kids were born while I was at Wolves, and it’s still my wife Julie’s favourite club, and I have so many fond memories from my time there.”
What then of the football, and the contributions made by Kelly and Froggatt during their respective spells at Molineux?
Kelly chalked up 103 appearances for the gold and black from 1993-95, notching 36 goals, highlights including that one against Albion, a sensational diving header in the FA Cup against Leicester after a brilliant break involving Don Goodman, scoring in THAT penalty shootout against Sheffield Wednesday, a hat trick against Bristol City and being top scorer in 1994/95.
Froggatt made 111 appearances and scored nine goals between 1994 and 1998, the best bits including scoring the aforementioned debut goal against Reading, setting up all four – including Iwan Roberts hat trick – in the 4-2 victory at the Hawthorns, a screamer against Queens Park Rangers and the run to the FA Cup semi-finals.
Sadly missing through injury for both of the play-off semi-finals of his time, against Bolton and Crystal Palace respectively, who knows if things might have been different had his pace and threat been available either as a fully- fledged winger or the wing back option utilised readily by Mark McGhee.
And that also goes for his best man – literally at his wedding – Tony Daley, who was snapped up with Froggatt in the pre-season ahead of that 94/95 campaign where it felt like everything was nicely coming together under Graham Taylor.
For Kelly, whose arrival along with Geoff Thomas and Kevin Keen had sparked similar scenes of optimism 12 months earlier, the arrival of the two exciting wingmen from Villa felt like manna from heaven.
“It was Graham Turner who signed me but by the second season Graham Taylor was in charge,” says Kelly.
“And I remember saying to him that summer, ‘gaffer you’ve signed the best two wingers around at the minute, I’m gonna score loads’!
“Then Dales got injured pretty much straightaway and Froggy a few months into the season, and, because of that, I don’t think we ever saw the best of the two of them together while I was there.”
Froggatt was a regular up until December as Wolves battled for top spot with Middlesbrough, leading from the front for long periods and scoring aplenty, including five goal salvos against Southend and Bristol City.
“I had played every game up until getting injured at Reading and so I missed it all when Ned had his fun and games with John McGinlay against Bolton in the play offs,” he recalls.
“We had been top for a while, and I always said that if Dales had stayed fit, we would have won the league comfortably.
“I also say – and not just because he is my mate and is sat here – that Ned was our best player that season as well.
“He was on fire, and should have won Player of the Season.
“We had injuries but it’s still so difficult to think why we didn’t get promoted at Wolves, and especially in that season with Graham Taylor in charge.
“I had signed for Graham at Villa when I was 14, and I knew how meticulous he was at everything, so when I signed for him at Wolves, I really thought he was going to be successful.”
Meticulous and detailed were words that followed Taylor around during his managerial career. They were part of what made him the success that he was. Froggatt has so many examples, of which he cites a couple.
“When I signed for Wolves, I stayed living in Sutton Coldfield where I had been at Villa,” he begins.
“Graham was sending spies near to where I lived to make sure I was behaving myself.
“I remember coming into training the once and he asked me if I had enjoyed the meal I had gone out for the night before – I was like, ‘how on earth does he know that’?
“And then when I was at Wolves, because I had such skinny legs, my shin pads used to fall off all the time, and it drove the gaffer mad.
“The one Monday morning, (assistant manager) Steve Harrison told me I had a meeting with the gaffer, and I was a bit worried thinking I had been caught on a night out or something!
“I went in, and there was a round table and a whiteboard, and the gaffer stood there, with his shin pads on and socks pulled up.
“He then spent the next hour showing me how to put my shin pads on, complete with diagrams.
“The other coaches were in the room, including Harry (Harrison), and he couldn’t look me in the face trying so hard to avoid collapsing into hysterics.”
Froggatt and Kelly’s stays within the Wolves dressing room, indeed dressing rooms in general, hailed from a very different era.
They were no place for the faint-hearted, and, during an entertaining night at the Cleveland, tales of the somewhat unexpected kept the audience in raptures.
From removing the soles of expensive shoes and sellotaping them back on, to cutting the sleeves out of suits, or sour milk being poured all over the interior of a BMW convertible, the levels of player joviality at Molineux back then were pretty off the scale.
“I didn’t like Ned at first,” adds Froggatt, “because he used to take my money off me.
“He’d go in goal after training and offer people a £10 bet that if he saved one out of two penalties they had to pay up.”
“Mark Rankine and Darren Ferguson were my best customers,” Kelly interjects.
“They were rubbish at scoring past me!”
Great friends and different personalities, there was one similarity between both the Froggatt and Kelly Molineux journeys.
Neither really wanted it to end.
Froggatt was in ‘the best form of my career’ when Wolves, in need of recouping funds, accepted an offer from Coventry while Kelly, on being told his first team options were going to be limited given the competition faced with Steve Bull and Don Goodman, felt it was necessary to move on, to Sunderland.
He has kept the letter, as ever meticulously put together by Taylor, which marked his departure.
“I don’t think I realised how good Graham Taylor was until I left Wolves and went elsewhere,” Kelly reveals.
“His attention to detail was so good, at a different level, but eventually I had to leave.
“He wrote me a letter when I left, which I’ve still got, where he said he couldn’t get three into two, and he was always going to play Bully and had brought in Don as his signing.
“I wasn’t going to stay to be a sub, that was my mantra everywhere I went in that as soon as I wasn’t going to be a regular I moved on.
“I just always wanted to play first team football, and not hang around in the reserves, and that’s why I had so many clubs!”
He has indeed, but also enjoyed so many more highlights away from his time at Molineux.
A blistering start to his career at Walsall, a topscoring 28 goals in helping Newcastle win the Championship title, only leaving because they bought Peter Beardsley, and scoring against England on one of his 26 international caps for the Republic of Ireland in the game which was abandoned due to crowd trouble in 1995.
Froggatt landed a senior England call-up whilst with Coventry a year after leaving Wolves, and, although not coming off the bench, was still a sign of his own achievements, including helping Villa to League Cup glory in 1994, only to be hugely disappointed to be left out due to a tactical reshuffle for the final.
Aside from their previous shared business interests, both Froggatt and Kelly have recently returned to more regular duties summarising on Wolves games for BBC WM, while Kelly has also enjoyed several different assistant manager and coaching positions since hanging up his boots, as recently as when working under Troy Deeney at Forest Green just over a year ago.
But amid all their footballing highlights, those spells at Wolves still bring back so many fond memories, most of which come oozing out during their night at the Cleveland.
It wasn’t just on the pitch that the squad struck up an understanding in the mid-Nineties, partners and families mingled socially too, and they always enjoyed their interactions with the Molineux faithful.
“I would never criticise any modern players because social media has made it a very different world now,” says Kelly.
“It feels like they sometimes have to hide away, and it’s difficult for them to go out and sit in bars and restaurants and meet fans.
“When I played it was all different, and we’d go to the pubs, and fans would come and buy us a pint, have a conversation and then leave us alone.
“We enjoyed that side of things, and I think there’s a sadness that it doesn’t really happen now, because I think the players are missing out on just how much the game means to the fans.”
And with that they are both off, to share a pint, a conversation and plenty of fun and games with Wolves supporters keen to indulge in a spot of nostalgia from a bygone era.
Friends and fans enjoying the chat. Rolling back almost 30 years. With memories of what might have been.
PICTURES COURTESY MARTIN HODGKISS PHOTOGRAPHY/CLEVELAND ARMS
