When Mike Stowell was at Wolves, the lack of parking facilities at Molineux meant that the players would leave their cars in the nearby pub – now the Leaping Wolf – on a Friday afternoon before an away game.
‘We’ve got Mickey, Mickey Stowell in our goal, in our goal’. Or should that be ‘Goalpost’. As the pub was then called.
Having travelled back on the team coach after the game, the former keeper and several of his team-mates would then pop in for a quick drink before heading home, joining many Wolves fans who had also made the trip.
On occasions, after a defeat, or a disappointing performance, it could be a lively conversation.
But for Stowell, that relationship with the fans was massively important. Win, lose or draw. Always has been and always will be.
“You have got to connect with fans, they pay their money and they come and support you and without them it’s a struggle,” he explains.
“Coming back from an away game – and sometimes it might be a bit difficult after a bad day – we always felt it was the right thing to do to pop in and see them.
“We were all honest lads at Wolves, and they were honest fans, and, as long as they knew we were giving our all, that was the most important thing.
“Yes, we could make mistakes, we could have an off day, but for me it is always important to make sure everyone is together and it’s not a case of ‘them and us’.
“We were one unit, and any club needs that if they want to be successful.”
Stowell has met and faced similar challenges head-on during his career as both player and coach which spans an almost unbroken 38 years.
Now he has to face another one.
Because, for the first time in 18 years, he is experiencing one of those breaks. And it has come after the start of pre-season.
After a truly incredible time with Leicester City, he finds himself out of work after new Foxes boss Enzo Maresca brought in his own backroom coaching team.
That often happens – and it’s only thanks to Stowell’s coaching acumen, strong sense of loyalty and supportive and enthusiastic personality that he survived so many managerial changes at Leicester – quite possibly 14 in total – up until now.
But the timing, coming when most clubs have staff already in place and preparations well underway for the new season, isn’t the best.
“Football is all I have done for 40 years – I don’t know much else,” says Stowell.
“I am ready to go again, now, and certainly not ready to retire.
“I’d love to be able to say I could go and sit on a beach all day and relax – but that’s not me.
“There’s a buzz about football, as a player and a coach, about feeling that pressure and then the euphoria if you get a result and celebrate with the fans.
“It is a tough game but there is no better game, and I have loved every minute of all my years in football.
“I’ve had my break now, I’ve done all the DIY jobs and the gardening, and I don’t need a sabbatical.
“It has been nice to spend a bit of time with the family, but I think I’m getting under my wife’s feet now – she wants me away and back at work and I’m happy with that.”
If Stowell’s work ethic – at age of 58 – shows no sign of diminishing, no one should really be surprised.
Before landing his big break in football, being signed by all-conquering Everton in late 1985 after impressing for North West Counties side Leyton Motors, Stowell had actually completed a four-year apprenticeship as a telecommunications engineer with BT.
Presumably, a strong and solid grounding and sense of perspective before heading into the rough and tumble of the world of professional football?
“I’d say so,” Stowell replies.
“It does ground you, show you what the real world is like, and is very different to nowadays, when a lot of kids go into academies at eight, nine, ten years-old, and have known nothing other than being looked after and having their boots and kit put out for them.
“Having said that, when I went to Wolves there were a lot of lads like Bully (Steve Bull) who’d had to really graft through the lower leagues to get a break.
“We were a team which appreciated being professional footballers, particularly how hard it is to get into the game and how it makes you more determined to succeed and stay in it once you are there.”
Stowell’s grounding on the football side came at Goodison Park, at an Everton side operating at the top end of English football.
Across five years he would only make one first team appearance, keeping a clean sheet in a Full Members Cup win against Millwall.
But the experience it gave was about far more than a mere statistic.
His learning and development came via several loan spells, and working so closely with Neville Southall, whom he – and many others of the era – regarded as “the best goalkeeper in England, and possibly the world.”
One of Stowell’s loan spells would prove pivotal, because it was spent at Molineux.
With Mark Kendall injured, he made seven appearances towards the back end of the 1988/89 campaign, Wolves’ second successive promotion, his debut coming with a 4-0 win against Bury in which Bull grabbed a hat trick. Shock.
Graham Turner had been impressed, to the tune that little over a year later, when looking for a new keeper on a permanent basis, he quickly made his move.
Then 25, Stowell was out of contract, but it was the pre-Bosman days, and so a tribunal set a fee of £275,000.
It wouldn’t prove to be bad value, all things considered.
Across the next 11 years, Stowell was the last line of defence in Wolves goal on no fewer than 448 occasions, putting him 12th in the all-time club appearance list, and moving past goalkeeping legends he massively respected in Phil Parkes and Bert Williams.
It remains, to all from that time, an enigma in how Wolves were somehow unable to secure promotion.
That Stowell remains so fondly remembered, and is still a favourite for many fans, is despite Wolves’ ultimate failure to reach the Promised Land but more a reflection on that level of engagement with fans across his decade of service.
The question of why it didn’t happen, why several different talented groups of players, who were also so tightly knit couldn’t haul themselves across the finish line, is probably one which will never receive a definitive answer.
“We were so ready for the Premier League,” insists Stowell.
“So often we’d build a quality squad, have a good pre-season, and then it almost seemed like a conspiracy to stop us.
“I remember John De Wolf doing his cruciate when we were absolutely flying, and then there were the play-off games.
“First Bolton, when we should have been out of sight in the home leg and John McGinlay punched David Kelly in the second which was scandalous.
“And then Crystal Palace, when we conceded a ludicrous goal in the 92nd minute of the first leg which left us 3-1 down, even though we threw everything at them at Molineux with that atmosphere in the second leg.
“We were so close on numerous occasions and you can look back and think, ‘if only’, but that’s football for you, it was always so difficult to make that final step.
“Every year we had the spirit, and every year the infrastructure got better, from what was almost like non-league when I first arrived and only two sides of the ground were open.
“It was all building for the Premier League, and it didn’t happen during when I was there but thank goodness it was only a matter of time before Wolves made it in the end.”
There were still plenty of highlights for Stowell, including a penalty save to preserve a point against West Bromwich Albion at the Hawthorns, and an emotional final appearance, coming off the bench for the last 15 minutes against QPR which featured a crucial save from Peter Crouch, which left no one in any doubt of how well received he was by the Molineux fanbase.
Stowell’s time was one where Wolves were very much united as a whole club, and he was often at the centre of it.
His video interviews with then Wolves press officer John ‘Fozzie’ Hendley, produced for the Official Travel Club to screen for travelling away fans, were the stuff of legend. While his wonderful camaraderie and sense of mischief with then club historian Graham Hughes spanned the generations.
Stowell was heavily involved in the whip-round to buy a new bicycle and hi-vis jacket after ‘Hughsie’ had come off his bike enroute to Molineux. And his weekly columns in the ‘Sporting Star’ always kept fans both informed and very much entertained.
It was a player/fan relationship that hailed from a bygone era, but also a time when the dressing room was so full of personality.
“It was a fantastic time at Wolves, and we had so many characters,” he recalls.
“It feels different these days that you can sometimes look at teams who are looking for a captain or struggling to find a captain.
“And sometimes a player becomes a captain because he has been at a club for a long time, or he’s in a certain position, like a centre half.
“That’s not how you pick a captain – a captain should be leading your dressing room as the boss’s right hand man, off the pitch as well.
“At Wolves, we had six or seven leaders, six or seven powerful voices, we weren’t afraid to fall out with each other on the pitch and off the pitch we would stick together.
“It was close knit, there were no little groups around the dressing room or talking around corners, we made sure if any of us were having a rough time we would get around each other.
“And yes, we would play hard as well when we had the opportunity, after we had worked hard, but often that was to bring us together and make sure that we were ready to go again on the pitch.”
During those days, Matt Murray was a young Academy goalkeeper coming through the ranks.
He was Stowell’s ‘boot boy’ as the term went, looking after the keeper with various tasks that young players used to fulfil in return for the odd financial tip but, more importantly, the chance to observe at close quarters what it took to be a professional footballer.
At times, like most aspiring young talents, there was an element of cheekiness to Murray’s working relationship with his more senior colleague, but overall, a huge amount of mutual respect.
“Matt was a cracking young lad, who was great to work with,” says Stowell.
“And the sheer size of him! Even when he was young, he was so strong that it was difficult for us to dish out some of the discipline that the Goalkeepers’ Union sometimes need to do!
“But what we did, and what I have always done with young goalkeepers, is to introduce them to training with the senior lads, because it’s such a good way of learning and putting what you are told into practice.
“Matt was one with an upbringing where he knew how to act with his peers, and he didn’t need much coaching or pushing, he just worked really hard and bided his time.
“And he was the best apprentice I ever worked with, my boots were immaculate, I’d get a nice cup of tea and he’d always run my bath after training – he couldn’t do enough!”
Stowell’s own coaching work with young goalkeepers had also developed beyond supporting Murray’s rise through the ranks.
Former Wolves and later Manchester United goalkeeping coach Eric Steele had suggested he took his coaching badges as early as possible – which he did – and, with thanks to then Wolves Academy manager Chris Evans, Stowell had already started delivering evening sessions to the club’s young players before his Molineux career came to an end.
When his Wolves journey did reach its conclusion, Stowell wouldn’t have been ready for any senior coaching responsibilities, and he prolonged his playing career with Bristol City before then stepping down to a hybrid role of reserve keeper and part-time goalkeeping coach.
By 2005 however, and on the recommendation of former Wolves’ team-mate Robert Kelly, Stowell was successful in joining the backroom team at Leicester.
There began almost two decades of the highs and lows of life in football.
Dropping to League One and coming back to the Championship and then Premier League, an incredible survival success before then – so memorably – winning the whole thing at odds of 5,000-1, reaching the quarter finals of the Champions League and later lifting the FA Cup.
Seeing so many managers come and go, but always being trusted to stay and remain such a positive influence, and, on six separate occasions, actually leading the team in between appointments.
As well as helping Kasper Schmeichel become one of Europe’s top keepers, which also secured a stint as the Denmark goalkeeping coach for a time.
But on the other side, and way beyond football, being part of the club when tragedy struck with the 2018 helicopter crash which killed the pilot and four passengers, including Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
Those were understandably very dark days, from there the club had to pull together and somehow recover, as they did to win the FA Cup in 2021, only to now have just lost their Premier League status only two years later.
“Since hearing the news about leaving, I have spent some time reflecting, and Leicester are such a great club where I thoroughly enjoyed my time,” says Stowell.
“I feel like I have been in two different families in my career, at Wolves and Leicester.
“At Wolves, as a player, it felt like my team-mates and the fans were my brothers, while at Leicester, as a coach, it is the staff who feel like a family.
“Leicester was incredible, doing different roles including managing the club on several occasions, winning the league, FA Cup, reaching the Champions League quarter finals.
“I am not sure many people stay at one club for that length of time, and I am extremely proud of my coaching career, just as I am proud of my playing days at Wolves.
“I have a lot of love for both clubs, in different ways, because they have given me amazing times.”
The love and pride for Wolves crowned perfectly towards the end of this season when Stowell was back at Molineux to take his place in the club’s Hall of Fame.
It was a special night, and even more so because his wife Rachel and youngest daughter Ella, were with him.
Both are England internationals, at senior and junior levels respectively, the joke being that Stowell is the only one in his house who isn’t, having once somehow dug his way through snowdrifts to make the plane for an England ‘B’ fixture in Algeria, only to remain as an unused substitute.
“When I first took the call from John (Richards) about the Hall of Fame, I was like, ‘wow’,” he describes.
“When you look at the names who are in there, the true greats who have won trophies, these are special people and to be put in amongst those was a great honour.
“To have Rachel and Ella there made it even more special, especially as Ella, at 15, never actually saw me play.
“She’s a very good young goalkeeper, and while I certainly don’t profess to tell her how she is getting on, I do go and watch her and hopefully she is a chip off the old block!
“It was nice, because she was so very proud, and that meant a lot to me as well.”
All of those accolades, in playing and coaching, are richly cherished by Stowell, and are achievements he will look back on with quiet satisfaction in the years to come.
For now, though, attention is firmly focused on making sure there are more achievements to come, more memories to make.
With all that experience and expertise, the versatility of different roles, the empathy of playing and coaching at different levels, and a personality that sits perfectly within a team environment, Stowell still has plenty to offer.
And he is very much open to offers, not feeling pigeon-holed into any particular job or indeed league, with working abroad also a consideration.
“The game is the game, and there is no better feeling than being involved in it,” he says.
“During my time it has changed tactically, and there has been so much progress, but I still know my job inside out and I am confident I could be an asset somewhere for sure.”
Having already worked at length for two ‘families’ in Wolves and Leicester, Stowell is now on the lookout for a third.
They say you can’t choose your family, but whoever chooses Stowell, is unlikely to be disappointed.
