It is 60 years since Jim Barron made his professional debut for Wolves between the sticks.
And 40 since he was the assistant manager locked in the middle of one of the most challenging Molineux seasons in recent history, just a few months on from such a memorable promotion.
And now? Barron turned 80 in October, but he is still heavily involved in football, assisting former Wolves Academy coach and Birmingham City defender Jerry Gill at Bath City in National League South.
Age is just a number. But for a man who has spent over six decades involved in the game, football is clearly a way of life. One that is very difficult to escape from. And why should he?
“I wasn’t doing much when Gilly rang me to be honest,” Barron explains.
“I’d been scouting for Everton up until Covid which I really enjoyed – a great club that is by the way – but then a new fella came in wanting to bring his own people and have everyone based up in Liverpool.
“I am living down in Berkshire so couldn’t really do that, and so I’d been just relaxing really, getting into my golf which I’ve never done before, even at my age!
“I knew Gilly from when I was coaching at Birmingham and he was a player, and it started with him phoning me and asking me to go and watch a few games for him, of future opponents.
“A bit later he was back on asking me to go and give him a hand, and I was like ‘what do you mean?’ and he said to go down and help him with the coaching.
“It’s a round trip of 170 miles to their training ground and stadium, but I said I’d go and have a look and meet the lads.
“The first thing I said to them is what I have said to Jerry – that if I had ever gone back to a top club after Birmingham, I’d have taken him with me, because of his attitude and how he applies himself to the game.
“He was one of the best pros I ever worked with.
“I told them that I presumed they were exactly the same if they were there playing for him, and we did a bit of training, and they really are a great set of lads.
“We had a decent pre-season and start to the season before a bit of a shocker when losing a local derby 6-2 against Weston.
“After that we worked on shape, shape and more shape, and steadied things again and have done fairly well since.
“It’s a tough league in National League South, and Bath are part-time when several others are full time, but they are in and around the play-offs which would be a great achievement if they can stay there, given some of the finances elsewhere.
“And for me, I’m enjoying being around football again, and just want to help Jerry as much as I can.”
With Barron still travelling to training twice a week, and matches at a weekend, it is difficult to believe it is a full six decades since he first burst onto the scene.
Born and brought up in County Durham, he turned out as goalkeeper for representative teams such as Newcastle Schools and Northumberland Schools, and then came to the attention of the scouts of Wath Wanderers, Wolves’ nursery team based in Yorkshire.
At the same time as there was interest from Newcastle and Sheffield United, Wolves, then a top club fresh from three league titles and the 1960 FA Cup, made their move.
Barron had a desire to spread his wings and take on a new challenge, and so Molineux was his choice.
He lived in digs with team-mate John Galley with the legendary landlady and indeed laundry lady ‘Mrs Clamp’, mother of Wolves’ powerhouse right half Eddie, in a terraced house on the site of what is now ASDA, literally a stone’s throw from the stadium.
Barron was the last line of defence as Wolves reached the FA Youth Cup Final in 1961/62, edged out over two legs by Newcastle, but part of a team including the likes of Bobby Thomson and Peter Knowles from which pretty much everyone went on to play at senior level.
Then came his own first team debut, against then reigning champions Everton, on the final day of November, 1963.
He kept a clean sheet in a 0-0 draw, and another in his next appearance, a 2-0 win at Stoke, and another for half of what turned into a 3-3 draw with Aston Villa.
At that stage deputising for Fred Davies, Barron would eventually make a total of eight appearances for Wolves, accumulating priceless and invaluable experience in a squad managed by the legendary Stan Cullis and containing true Molineux icons such as Thomson, Knowles, Ron Flowers and Peter Broadbent.
“I still remember those games and especially at Stoke, where it was absolutely freezing,” Barron recalls.
“We were actually talking about that recently, about how culture has changed and we used to play on grounds that they would never play on now.
“The ground was like concrete that night, I had towels taped onto my hips with string because we didn’t have tracksuits with padding and all that b******s!
“Keepers didn’t wear gloves, it was just as much deep heat as you could get on your hands, and when I was telling that story all the lads at Bath were laughing!
“But my time at Wolves was brilliant, working with all those incredible pros, and under Stan.
“He was a disciplinarian as many people have said, and very different to the managers of today – I don’t think I ever saw him dressed in anything apart from a suit!”
By the time Barron departed Wolves, Cullis’s incredible 13-year spell in charge was over, and Andy Beattie was at the helm.
Barron had been chased by Chelsea, who had actually used him in an end-of-season tour in the West Indies alongside his Wolves duties in the Caribbean when Peter Bonetti had to head off on England duty.
Tommy Docherty – more on him later – took him to Stamford Bridge, where he would only make one appearance, building his career more readily as a much-used first choice at Oxford, Nottingham Forest and Swindon and a year in America.
Then came the move into coaching, initially under John Barnwell as a player/coach with Peterborough, the same man who brought him into the backroom set-up at Molineux.
What a few years that proved to be.
As Barnwell then departed, Barron had one game in caretaker charge alongside Ian Ross, before working under Ian Greaves – “different class, and a lovely fella”.
The summer of 1982 heralded even more change, as Wolves, who had flirted dangerously with liquidation, were taken over by the Allied Properties consortium fronted by club playing legend Derek Dougan and financed by the Bhatti Brothers.
With Greaves given his marching orders, as Wolves prepared for life in the Second Division under new owners, at one stage Barron was the only member of staff remaining. Last man standing!
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what was happening,” he admits.
Graham Hawkins was soon drafted in as manager, someone Barron was aware of and indeed got on well with, and what followed was an excellent season in which Wolves were runners-up to QPR to secure an immediate return to the top division.
The only problem with that, as difficult as it might be to find a problem with a season which finishes in promotion, is what followed next.
The list put together for players needed to strengthen the team ahead of the return to the top-flight included David Seaman, Mick McCarthy, Paul Bracewell and Gary Lineker.
Instead, and this is in no way disparaging to the man himself, they signed Tony Towner, snapped up during the only week of the summer when neither Hawkins nor Barron were in the country, and without their knowledge, after Dougan had been impressed by the Rotherham winger during a punditry stint on Yorkshire Television.
It became a hugely challenging season, brightened by the odd highlight including a victory against Liverpool at Anfield and away at West Bromwich Albion, but ending in the inevitable relegation.
Hawkins was dismissed after a defeat at Ipswich – “a ridiculous decision” according to Barron, who then spent six games in caretaker charge ahead of the impending return to the second tier.
There was a time when he believed he was very much in the frame to then land the job full time, only for Docherty, his former manager at Chelsea, to arrive instead.
“It was all a bit of a farce when the Bhatti Brothers came in with the Doog – I still don’t know what they were about and what they were trying to do,” Barron recalls.
“When they took over, they just said to Graham and myself that we just needed to keep things steady and stay in mid-table.
“As it was, with a mixture of youngsters and experienced pros such as Budgie (John Burridge) and Doddy (Alan Dodd), we found ourselves up in the top six and then went all the way to finish second and get promoted.
“That is where the problems started.
“The lads had done really well but we knew we weren’t going to be able to compete at the higher level with the same squad – we needed new players and unfortunately, they didn’t come.
“All the promises that had been made, they just disappeared, and we only ended up with Tony coming in, and he had been signed by the Doog.
“It’s such a shame because we’d built up some momentum and that could have carried on, but instead Wolves were relegated which started the spell of successive relegations from which they might not have recovered.
“When it got to the summer, I had been invited to go over to do a couple of weeks coaching in America, and I asked Eric Woodward (general manager) what was going to be happening and what I should do.
“Although they were interviewing different people, Eric told me there was a great chance I’d get the job, but then on the second week in America I got a call to say that Tommy was coming in, and that turned out to be an absolute disaster.
“I would have loved to have been a manager more in my career, especially that opportunity at Wolves, and I’d planned out pre-season and getting everything ready to try and have a successful season.”
Docherty’s reign proved to be short and ill-fated.
At the start Barron was still leading much of the training with Docherty not a hands-on manager to the effect that sometimes he was away from the club completely, until the time he decided to dispense with the services of both Barron and respected youth coach Frank Upton, bringing in son Mike as one of the replacements.
Barron, who won a claim for wrongful dismissal over the manner of his Wolves exit, was so frustrated and disillusioned by the dramatic turn of events that he decided to step away from football completely.
Initially opening a bar and nightclub, he then followed the example of some of his regulars by spending several months working on the oil rigs in the North Sea, only to end up losing a finger in an accident which led to a return to the perhaps less dangerous – physically at least – world of coaching and management.
Initially that came in Saudi Arabia, and then Iceland – winning a cup and finishing as league runners-up – before opportunity knocked closer to home and back on British soil.
That was as manager at Cheltenham Town in non-league in the late Eighties – which included signing Wolves’ League Cup hero Andy Gray – whilst Barron has since been an assistant or coach at Birmingham under Trevor Francis, where he first encountered Gill, Aston Villa, alongside Ron Atkinson, Everton, coaching Neville Southall during Howard Kendall’s tenure as boss, and Northampton Town.
And his many spells as caretaker boss have included not just Wolves but also Villa and Blues.
“Three of the biggest clubs in the Midlands,” he says.
“At Villa, I must be the only manager to have a 100 per cent record in the top division – it was only for one game, but I’ll take it!”
It’s been a phenomenal career, one in which the coaching seeds were sown when training the other goalkeepers at Swindon as well as helping with the reserves, and also during that playing stay Across the Pond with Connecticut Bicentennials.
Not only did Barron try to keep out the likes of Pele, George Best, Eusebio and Franz Beckenbauer on the pitch whilst Stateside, but he also got involved in coaching clinics helping young players, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
That’s a trait he certainly has in common with Gill who, in almost two years as Wolves Academy Under-18s manager, worked with many who have progressed to the professional game such as Morgan Gibbs-White, Ryan Giles, Ryan Leak and Cameron John.
“Jerry is a great guy and a very good coach and someone who will hopefully one day have an opportunity to manage full time, ideally with Bath if that could ever happen,” says Barron.
“He is so thorough in everything that he does, and I think there is more thought that goes into his sessions and preparation that I believe happens at a lot of full-time clubs.
“I think he deserves that opportunity, but I am certainly enjoying working with him again and, touch wood, we can push on this season and make it a successful one.”
Fresh from an FA Trophy win against Boreham Wood from the National League, a division above, Bath travel to Dover Athletic this weekend to try and stay in and around that promotion picture.
For Barron, the motivation and passion will be every bit as strong at the Crabble Stadium as when he first set out in football all those years ago.
“I still love it, especially that interaction with the players, trying to help people get better,” he says.
“It’s funny because my lad now lives in Australia, and he phoned me the other day and asked me how it was all going.
“He said he could tell from my voice how much I am enjoying it, and that’s from the other side of the world!”
