For John Teasdale, fixtures between Wolves and Everton formed 25% of his overall appearance count at Molineux. But the forward was ultimately destined for a very different life Across the Pond, which has included mixing with the rich and famous! It’s been quite the adventure, as Paul Berry discovered.
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Wolves 0, Everton 3. Saturday, January 23rd, 1982. Not one that will live long in the memory or the Molineux history books. Except, perhaps, as being one of nine successive defeats for Wolves in league and cup at the time.
A Wolves team destined for relegation, just two seasons on from lifting their most recent major trophy with the 1980 League Cup Final at Wembley, not to mention their most recent highest placing, sixth in the top tier.
It was more notable on an individual basis for striker John Teasdale.
He didn’t know it at the time, but it would be his eighth and final appearance in a Wolves shirt.
Had he made a couple more, a further payment would have been due to Nairn, from whom he had joined Wolves little over a year earlier.
So, when later named on the bench for a game with Leeds, but withdrawn a couple of hours before kick-off due to the risk of moving in sight of activating that clause, his time at Wolves was over.
Life, however, was only just beginning. There was some more football, with Walsall, Hereford and Blackpool amongst others.
But then after that, the focus became more global.
Teasdale headed to America, where he became good mates with a rock legend, dated a film star, and drove limousines for a living.
He is still there now, at 62, working as a sales manager in a Honda store in Houston, building on many years’ experience in the motor industry.
So, Wolves against Everton back in 1982 now feels like more of a minor inconvenience!
“America has always been very good to me,” Teasdale reflects.
“The 80s and 90s were great times when you could rent an apartment five minutes or so from the beach for 500 or 600 bucks a month.
“You could live really well in Los Angeles for not a lot of money.
“I first came over in 1986, largely because of seeing all the American shows on TV, like Miami Vice!
“I just liked the look of it all, sunshine all the time, and through a friend of a friend managed to get out to New York in the December.
“It was cold, miserable and raining, and I remember thinking, ‘this is nothing like what I saw on the TV!’
“The guy I was staying with said I should get myself to California, but the flights were 400 dollars which was a lot of money back then.
“So, he then said get the Greyhound Bus, and there was me with no idea how big America was, thinking I’d get on this bus and maybe 10 to 12 hours later I’d be getting off in LA.
“Three days! Three ****** days! I think every eccentric in America came and sat by me on that bus during the journey.
“There was a guy who said he had been in Vietnam and was telling me all the stories complete with pretending he was using a machine gun with all the firing noises – I wasn’t getting any sleep during that time.
“Finally, I got off the bus at Long Beach in California, and was wondering what on earth I was actually doing with my life!”
Things did get better. Including the rock star, the film star, the limousines. More on that later!
But perhaps, given Teasdale’s eye for travel and spreading his wings Stateside, it is no surprise that he was fairly well-travelled in his formative years.
Born in Glasgow, his father was in the Navy, prompting plenty of different homes in the likes of Ipswich and Portsmouth before heading back North of the Border and settling in Elgin at the age of 12.
By 16, he was playing – and scoring goals – for Nairn County in the Highland League, and his Uncle, stationed at RAF Cosford, wrote a letter to Wolves’ chief scout.
When a trial included scoring twice in a friendly against Hednesford, Teasdale was taken on, signing a professional contract shortly after he had turned 18.
“It was amazing to get that move as Wolves are such a big club, and I joined the season after they had won the League Cup and finished in the top six,” he recalls.
“Having said that, you could already start to see a bit of the penny-pinching and how the club soon got themselves into a mess financially.
“The training ground at Castlecroft wasn’t great, with just the one pitch and poor facilities, and I think a club the size of Wolves, with how big they had been across football, should have had better.”
Teasdale enjoyed something of a dream debut in the first team, setting up fellow Scot Andy Gray for the only goal of the game to seal victory away at Sunderland.
He stayed in and around the team for the remainder of the 1980/81 season, chalking up seven appearances, before that final outing – at the time unbeknown to him – against Everton in the following campaign.
Still only 19 when he moved on from Wolves, joining such a big club had been very much an education, on and off the pitch. Some of which wasn’t perhaps completely conducive to making a success as a footballer!
“There were so many great guys at Wolves back then – people like John Richards, Geoff Palmer and Willie Carr – proper club legends,” Teasdale recalls.
“Then there was Mick Hollifield and also Paul Bradshaw, god rest his soul, Braddy was my big buddy who took me under his wing.
“He was my partner in crime, a proper character, who was actually very quiet and quite a shy man in general.
“But he liked to go for a few beers, and so I would tag along, and end up heading on nights out when I should have been at home resting.
“The problem was, I was an 18-year-old, hundreds of miles from home, and I was put in digs with Mrs Davies, a lovely lady, but she was 78 years old.
“There was one TV in the house, I had no one else to talk to, and when the boredom kicked in, I ended up going out.
“I don’t think there was a lot of thought that went into my digs situation – it would have been far better for me to be with a family with grown-up kids or another one of the lads.
“But do you know what? I wouldn’t swap what happened to me at Wolves for anything.
“It was a great experience and a great time and a time when it was still real football…
- Express & Star subscribers can read the full feature here – https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/2025/08/29/the-wolves-striker-turned-limousine-driver-who-dated-a-film-star-and-mixed-it-with-the-rich-and-famous/
