Wolves’ home game against Manchester United 40 years ago this month probably didn’t have the same sort of glitz and glamour as a modern Premier League clash such as last night’s at Molineux. But for utility man Mark Buckland, it will always be that little bit special. As Paul Berry found out.
*
There was barely a couple of weeks between Mark Buckland working as a scaffolder to signing for Wolves in the top division of English football. Scaling the heights in more ways than one.
And his home debut? Against Manchester United no less, Bryan Robson, Ray Wilkins, Norman Whiteside and all.
There was no danger of Buckland getting carried away, however.
Because when the then 22-year-old turned up for his debut at Birmingham City the previous weekend, they wouldn’t let him in the ground!
“I’d just joined Wolves and, because I was still living in Cheltenham and it was easier, I said I’d make my own way to the game and a mate gave me a lift,” Buckland recalls.
“I didn’t really know too much about protocol in those days and so when I got to St Andrew’s, with my boots in a plastic bag, the security fella asked me what I was doing.
“’I’m here to play football’, I replied. No joy. He wouldn’t let me in.
“I then had to wait outside for half an hour until the team coach arrived and Jim Barron (Wolves assistant manager) confirmed who I was, and I played in the game which finished nil-nil.
“Football was very different back then!”
A similar fate befell Buckland on his second away game, on this occasion at Aston Villa.
Again, he made his own way there, and in this occasion a young local approached him after parking up to say he would look after his car.
“I remember Mark Walters coming off the bench early on in that game and doing stuff with the ball which Cristiano Ronaldo could only dream of,” Buckland adds.
“I got back to my car afterwards and the young lad was still there guarding the car, so I gave him all my loose change.
“’Brilliant,’ he said. You can come back next week’.
“’Not a chance,’ I replied. ‘You’ve just done us 4-0.”
Football was indeed a very different game some four decades ago, with nowhere near the level of trappings and relative luxuries experienced by today’s players.
But it was probably even easier for Buckland to stay low key and grounded given he had certainly put the hard graft in during his formative years. He actually moved to Wolves, in February 1984, from AP Leamington in non-league.
He had first joined hometown club Cheltenham – also then in non-league – as a 14-year-old, progressing through the ranks with youth team and reserves to sign a contract at 18.
After a couple of seasons where first team options were limited, Buckland made the move to Leamington to play under manager Graham Allner, who would have a strong influence on his career.
Initially it was to turn him from a centre forward into an attacking full back, quite a niche role in those days, but it worked. And Buckland was part of a Leamington side that won both league and cup in one season and progressed to the first round of the FA Cup and a narrow 1-0 defeat against Gillingham.
And then, for Buckland, the Wolves came howling.
“I got invited to a behind-closed-doors trial game against Burnley and, to be honest, I wasn’t going to go,” he admits.
“When I’d been at Cheltenham, I’d had a trial at Bristol Rovers and I also went to Arsenal a few times but, because nothing had come of it, I had been happy enough to just stay where I was and try and get in the team.
“But the lads I was working with as a scaffolder told me I shouldn’t miss the chance so I off I went to Wolves.
“I turned up and was sent down to the dressing room where there were about 40 players in there, until the reserves were told to head off to Castlecroft.
“I was told to stay where I was because John Humphrey was injured, and I got changed and started looking around the dressing room and saw all these players that I had watched on the telly!
“We went out on the pitch and I was at right back, and I remember getting the ball and running forward.
“I played a one-two with Wayne Clarke and then stuck it in the corner before running back to my position.
“I looked across to Doddsy (Alan Dodd) and John Pender in the middle and could see them thinking, ‘who the **** is this guy’?
“’What are you doing?’ one of them shouted across. ‘I’m just playing football,’ I replied.
“I was just trying to enjoy myself and play my normal game, this was all new to me playing at that level.”
Buckland then also grabbed an assist, returning the favour for Clarke, as Wolves won 2-0.
Directly after the game he was called into the manager’s office to be offered a contract.
“I went there as a scaffolder and came home as a professional footballer,” Buckland recalls.
“When I told people when I came back, they thought I was having them on – it was proper Roy of the Rovers stuff.”
It was. But it was true. Even if it took a bit of convincing to actually get into the away dressing rooms for the first couple of fixtures, Buckland was a Wolf, plying his trade in the top division of English football.
Which included coming up against that star-studded United team for his Molineux debut. For which his cousin and another friend were there, to watch it all unfold.
Sammy Troughton put Wolves in front and Buckland had been substituted ten minutes from time ahead of Whiteside grabbing a late equaliser.
“It was strange because having played at Birmingham, I was a little bit late into training on the Monday before the United game because a lorry had jack-knifed on the motorway,” he says.
“We used to train in the gym next to the ground, and as I walked in, the lads were saying that I had made my debut and won man of the match and thought I could do what I liked.
“That was brilliant because it broke the ice for me with my new team-mates, and I settled in really quickly and got on well with everyone.
“I trained all week and (manager) Graham Hawkins told me on the Friday that I was going to be in the team.
“’Who have we got then?’ I asked. I genuinely didn’t know, but it was United and so my cousin and my mate came up for the game.
“I can remember walking out in front of 20,000 at Molineux, against some of these top players, and it was a great occasion.
“After the match I went into the players’ lounge, effectively a room with a bar, and all those United players were in there but I couldn’t find my cousin and my mate.
“I went back to Cheltenham and caught up with them and they couldn’t believe they had missed the chance to be in there and meet them – they were gutted!”
It was the start for Buckland of an incredible time, albeit one of mixed emotions as he got the chance to live his footballing dream at a time when the team were really struggling.
Having faced Manchester United, and been to Villa Park, there were away games to follow at West Ham, Arsenal, Tottenham and Everton, as well as a goalless derby-day draw at home to West Bromwich Albion.
This was a world removed from the scaffolding assignments Buckland had been working on just a few weeks earlier, but he’s a fairly calmly spoken and laid back character which helped him take it all, effortlessly, in his stride.
“To me football has always been football, wherever you play, and it’s about how hard you want to make it,” he said.
“I thought I had kept myself reasonably fit but that was certainly a step-up, but the lads helped me settle in – people like John Humphrey, Pee Wee (Paul Dougherty), Doddsy and John Pender at the back.
“I was playing against all these top players from top clubs, and I just tried to enjoy it, but as a team we struggled and ended up getting relegated.”
It was all change at Molineux that summer. Barron had stepped in as caretaker boss after Hawkins had been relieved of his duties, but Tommy Docherty came in and took the helm as Wolves went in search of an immediate topflight return.
As it was, they exited the league in the other direction, completing the second step of three successive relegations which made for a nosedive to the Fourth Division. It was a chaotic spell.
Nothing perhaps summed it up more than Buckland not making the matchday squad for the first game of his first full as Docherty opted to name Derek Ryan as his substitute, partly as the young winger was featuring in a TV documentary that was focusing on a couple of young players at the time.
Docherty admitted to Buckland he had made a mistake and soon brought him into the fold, where he would play in pretty much every position, finishing a hugely disappointing Wolves season with five league goals, putting him joint top scorer alongside Alan Ainscow and Tony Evans.
“Tommy said that me being able to play in different positions was good for him but not so good for me because I couldn’t really nail down a regular place,” Buckland recalls.
“I played in every position that season, apart from in goal, and even that nearly happened at one point when Tim Flowers knocked his head on the post.
“It ended up being a really poor season but we didn’t start too bad – then it felt like the training methods changed and it became more about fitness than playing football and it all went downhill and we just couldn’t get the results.
“I didn’t know at the time, but it also turned out I’d been playing with a sciatic nerve issue for three months.
“I was just having rubs on my hamstring and we knew I wasn’t right but I just carried on playing, because I hated missing games.
“Even after I left Wolves, and towards the end of my career when I was playing for Gloucester, I played 99 games in a row and missed the next one and I was absolutely gutted.”
As Wolves prepared for life in the third tier, Buckland was more than happy to try and help, and shook hands on a new contract ahead of the close season.
However, a few weeks later, that offer was withdrawn.
“It was never about money for me, I’d never had it growing up, so for me it was about playing football,” Buckland insists.
“The contract certainly wasn’t big – it was a little bit more than the previous year but even that had been well below what I could earn in scaffolding!
“I didn’t want to leave Wolves at all, I had planned on staying, but I had no choice.”
It was Buckland’s mentor Allner who came to the rescue, initially by helping him receive treatment for the back-related nerve problem via Birmingham General Hospital, and then – near the start of his own hugely successful spell as Kidderminster Harriers manager – taking him to Aggborough.
It didn’t really work out, Buckland had perhaps fallen out of love with football a little bit, but with Allner’s blessing he moved on, initially to play for a lower ranked local team before heading back to the start, to Cheltenham, where his career was revitalised.
He made over 350 appearances, again in many different positions, was twice crowned Player of the Year and twice finished runner-up, and became something of a club legend.
He also continued to play for as long as he could, moving on to Gloucester and then other clubs down the pyramid, even turning out for Bishop’s Cleeve third team at the age of 50 and beyond! Stanley Matthews, eat your heart out!
“I reckon I played some form of football up until I was maybe 58, I just enjoyed it too much,” says Buckland, who is now 62.
“It’s just walking football for me now!”
Buckland never studied for his coaching badges, but he has passed on his experience and knowledge in different ways, including supporting his good mate John Hunt with Bishop Cleeve’s ‘A’ team in the past, and helping a junior side in which his son Alec featured become the first from Cheltenham to win a tournament named after his father, who passed away when Buckland was just 14.
Still living in Cheltenham, Buckland continues to watch local football whenever possible, and has not long hung up the scaffold to move into retirement.
He has previously twice had stents fitted into his coronary artery, but remains fit and healthy, and is now ready to enjoy family life with wife Yvonne.
They have just become grandparents thanks to daughter Rhea, whilst son Alec is also now married and hoping to start a family.
And Buckland still follows Wolves’ results, even though he prefers to now take in local non-league games than watch the Premier League.
He actually turned down a potential return to Molineux when an offer came the season after he had left, but any regrets at not taking that up are far outweighed by the family life that might not have come his way otherwise.
There was one return, for Cheltenham in an FA Cup tie when Brett Angell opened the scoring with a great strike for the Robins, before Steve Bull notched a hat trick in a 5-1 win for Wolves.
“After Brett scored early on, I remember someone on the pitch saying why didn’t he leave it till the last 15 minutes and not the first – because after that Bully got to work!” Buckland reflects.
He was the 644th player to represent Wolves and, given his utility man status and the fate of the club at the time, he wouldn’t be among the first to spring to mind among the Molineux faithful.
Yet although he isn’t one to shout from the rooftops, he is clearly proud of his 56 appearances, and five goals, even if he doesn’t have any particular Wolves memorabilia as an enduring legacy.
“We weren’t allowed to keep anything in those days, if you threw your shirt into the crowd you had to pay for another one,” he laughs.
“But I loved the chance to pull that gold shirt on, and I still follow the club’s results.
“I may not have got any memorabilia or anything like that from my time as a player, but I will always have the memories.”
