It was the best of times and the worst of times. The words of Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities.
It was written in 1859, but could have been resurrected to perfectly sum up the fortunes of Wolves in the 1980s.
The best of times? The start of the decade and lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 1980, still Wolves’ most recent major trophy. And at the end of the decade, the revival, with another Wembley win in the Sherpa Van Trophy in the midst of back-to-back promotions from the lower leagues.
The worst of times? The early and mid-points of the decade. Almost going out of business in 1982 and 1986. Sailing mighty close to the wire. Half the stadium condemned, crowds at rock bottom, successive relegations from first division to fourth. Those weren’t the days my friend.
In terms of the main protagonists around the club in that period, there is one name who, whilst earning just and deserved recognition for his commitment and dedication, probably still goes slightly under the radar as regards the depth and range of his overall contribution.
Today marks a century since the birth, in Shropshire, of Jack Harris. A humble, family man whose impact on Wolves’ fortunes in the Eighties and Nineties played such a key role in preventing one of English football’s most famous institutions from going to the wall.
In the establishing and growing of key relationships with important council leaders, in underwriting the signings of Steve Bull and Andy Thompson, in bringing Billy Wright back into the Wolves fold, and in working so closely with Sir Jack Hayward, Harris not only prevented the good ship Molineux from sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He helped right its passage, setting a course for a comeback and journey which set sail for the current day, with Wolves now into an eighth successive season in the Premier League.
It is little wonder that he had a stand named after him. The South Bank. Previously a terrace which had become home to the noise and the passion of the most vociferous fans after the North Bank was forced into closure. Or that a specially commissioned bust of his head, designed by James Butler, the sculptor responsible for the statues of Wright, Stan Cullis and Hayward, has been residing in Wolves Museum since being produced a decade ago.
“Dad never expected anything like those accolades,” explains Harris’s son John, who feels both fortunate and privileged to have shared so many years on the Wolves’ board with his Dad.
“He was quite a humble person, and all he ever wanted to do was support Wolves, his club.
“He didn’t play for the club, or manage the club, but it was such a great honour that he was recognised in that way.
“I remember the first night when the Stand was unveiled with the special game against Honved – Dad said it was the best day of his life apart from when he got married!”
Born on September 11th in 1925, and brought up in Old Park in Telford, football was heavily involved in the life of Jack Harris from an early age.
A left-footed midfielder who played at a decent level especially while studying at Loughborough where he was in the first eleven, Harris was a boyhood friend of Roy Pritchard, who was just six months older and also a Shropshire native having been born in Dawley.
Pritchard would go on to become an FA Cup winner with Wolves in 1949, and League Championship winner, the club’s first, in 1953/54.
But his trial is an event which was certainly well remembered in the Harris household.
“Dad grew up with ‘Pritch’ from the age of six and they would kick a ball together in their spare time,” recalls John.
“When Pritch got a trial at Wolves, Dad went along purely because of his interest in football, and stood on the side, watching.
“It turned out they were short of a player for the trial game, and so Dad ended up making up the numbers and going in goal.
“That meant he was always able to claim that he’d actually had a trial with Wolves!”
Harris senior was an excellent sportsman in several different disciplines, helped by being ambidextrous in terms of being just as good with right and left hands as he was with right and left feet!
Boxing was another keen favourite, and when he was asked by the careers master at his local grammar school as to his future aspirations, the response was to be either a professional snooker player or footballer!
His own father soon put him straight on that, and so he set off on a very different career path in engineering, alongside playing football locally with Hinkshay, right up until the age of 36.
But alongside building up that career, eventually setting up a family business which would later involve John, that interest in football, and trying to become involved in football, never wavered.
With a friend from student days developing business interests in South Wales, Harris first became involved as a director with Newport County in the 1960s, and then closer to home at Walsall during the following decade, where he eventually became chairman.
Close alliances had been forged with Ken Wheldon and Dick Homden at Walsall, and when Wheldon took over as chairman at Birmingham City, Harris remained with the Saddlers until selling the club in 1986.
Ultimately, perhaps that was fate, because he would ultimately have a part to play at Wolves just a few months later.
And yet, that could have been sooner. As Harris initially tried to help the club when they first went into receivership in 1982.
“I remember I was in London and Dad phoned and told me they were going to go for Wolves,” John explains.
“The three of them – Wheldon, Homden and Harris – put a consortium together, and they had got it done within ten minutes, but then Deadly Doug (Ellis) swooped in and gazumped them on the offer.
“That lasted two weeks, because Doug looked at it and pulled the plug, and that ultimately led to the Bhatti Brothers arriving and eventually dragging Wolves into even deeper trouble.
“By 1986, the club was in an even worse state, but that didn’t put Dad off!”
In that summer of 1986, as the World Cup kicked off in Mexico, Wolves legend John Richards was a few months on from hanging up his boots having returned home from a spell playing in Madeira.
He had started working as a Sports & Recreation Officer with Wolverhampton Council, just around the moment that Wolves fell into the hands of the receivers for the second time in four years.
This time around, it was Harris and Homden in the frame for a takeover, with additional financial muscle provided by Gallagher Estates, who had their eye on the land which eventually became the ASDA supermarket.
And all of this intertwined seamlessly with the drive and determination of John Bird, leader of the Council, who helped negotiate the deal which saw the local authority purchase key club assets such as Molineux and the Castlecroft training ground.
“I had been with the Council for about six months when the club went back into receivership, and recall Jack Harris being a key player in putting the consortium together with Dick Homden,” says Richards.
“That support from the Council was crucial, particularly the combination of Jack and John Bird which convinced the receivers that they were passing the club on to a credible and responsible group.
“After what had happened in those years with the Bhatti Brothers, Jack was part of that group who really stabilised everything at Wolves, which led to the development in the years which followed.”
For Richards, his new role and the Council’s acquisitions offered another exciting route back into impacting sport in the town, including the sale of the unfit for purpose Castlecroft training ground to the RFU (Rugby Football Union), who constructed a new academy.
With the Gallaghers interest more centred around property than football, for Harris and Homden, work quickly began on trying to lay some on-pitch foundations.
With two sides of Molineux condemned, a squad shorn of quality, and very little cash in the coffers, from a standing start it was certainly a challenge.
But they weren’t shy of taking unpopular decisions. Brian Little had impressed supporters as interim manager, but on the recommendation of scouting guru Ron Jukes, the duo made a change to bring in Graham Turner, which would prove a masterstroke.
And when the transfer budgets couldn’t stretch to the £65,000 needed to snap up Bull and Thompson, Harris and Homden did the deal themselves. Just imagine what might have happened at Wolves had those two managed to slip through the net!
“Dad wrote a company cheque out to make sure the club could sign Steve and Andy,” adds John.
“I think he had it back from the club later once things improved, but it needed underwriting, and that was the commitment that Dad and Dick showed towards Wolves at the time.”
Homden served as chairman until 1988, until a disagreement, not so much with Harris but others involved at the time, saw him resign from the position, leaving Harris to take the helm.
The two had been great friends, and, thankfully, spoke again and shook hands before Homden’s passing in 2010.
Harris and John, already working colleagues as well as Dad and son due to the family engineering business, continuing to oversee operations alongside the trusted and hugely respected club secretary Keith Pearson.
And Wolves were on the up.
Back-to-back promotions either side of a glorious day at Wembley in the Sherpa Van Trophy Final saw the team move up to the Championship equivalent, one agonising step away from the topflight vacated in 1983.
The club was now solvent again – indeed way beyond that – with a healthy bank balance of approximately £800,000.
But for all their exceptional work, to take the next step, those in charge needed a fresh injection of finance. Then came Sir Jack.
“We became victims of our own success in a way building the club back up because the initial plan was for the Gallaghers to hand over the shares and walk away,” John explains.
“But they had helped play their part in the rescue of the club and so when Sir Jack showed an interest, the Gallaghers ended up receiving over £2million when he took over in 1990.
“Dad knew Sir Jack already, and I think Sir Jack recognised what had been going on and the job Dad had done in rebuilding the club.
“So, he said he would only take over if Jack stayed on as chairman, which obviously he was delighted to do, and when Sir Jack believed something was right, he was adamant in sticking behind it all the way.”
For Richards, who would later work closely with both Harris and Sir Jack when joining the board as Managing Director, there were plenty of similarities indicating why the two dove-tailed so effectively in their love and enthusiasm for Wolves.
“I think Sir Jack getting involved had a lot to do with his relationship with Jack as they were both top businessmen who had a lot of respect for each other,” says Richards.
“I ended up working closely with Jack when I returned to the club and he was a lovely man, similar to Jack in so many ways.
“I would call him an old-fashioned type of person but one with so many top qualities, of credibility, honesty, being genuine and always doing things for the right reasons.
“They both had their hearts in the football club and set on doing their best for the football club and the fact that Sir Jack named a Stand after Jack was a sign of that relationship between them.”
What a night that was, by the way. Wolves against Honved in a December friendly 40 years after the historic original, to officially open the house that Sir Jack built including the new Jack Harris Stand behind the goal. Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas back at Molineux to renew acquaintances with Wright. Even a floodlight failure, which initially put Wolves’ following league fixture against Watford in jeopardy, couldn’t spoil the occasion.
Harris had also played a key role in the redevelopment that had been bankrolled by Sir Jack, turning a half-open stadium with dressing room full of leaks and cockroaches, to a Golden Palace. It was Harris who initially built the relationship with architect Alan Cotterell, who then delivered brilliantly in making the plans a reality. A stadium fit for a Queen when Elizabeth II visited to mark its completion. It was also Harris who, much to Sir Jack’s delight, helped bring fellow ‘Shropshire lad’ Wright back into the fold, where he was able to enjoy some happy years back at Molineux before his own passing in 1994. And it was Harris who helped the former players – whose Honorary Secretary at the time Peter Creed had supported the rescue mission in ’86 – more strongly reconnect.
So many powerful and lasting contributions which made an impact. Without any one of them, life at Wolves would have ended up being very different. And also, perhaps above all else, a father and son, sharing a collective dream and string of experiences which John continues to carry with such understandable fondness.
“I was 27 when I first came on the board, and I remember going with Graham Turner and Garry Pendrey to matches when they would call me the ‘YTS Chairman’,” John laughs.
“When I asked Dad what I needed to do as a director, he just said to turn up, help and support the club, and that’s what I did for 15 years.
“I was very close with Dad – I have four sisters so we had to stick together – and we spent a lot of time together both in the business and then with Wolves, on Saturday afternoons, Tuesday nights, at reserve matches.
“His first club was always Wolves, and he took me to my very first game against Sheffield Wednesday in 1968 when I was six.
“I remember the once we had been to a game at Chesterfield, a lovely old club and stadium, with pie and peas and not salmon and prawns!
“We were just about to get into the car and a couple of lads, one with a black eye, came up to us and started talking with strong Black Country accents.
“They said they had missed the bus home, and Dad didn’t hesitate, telling them to get in the car and we’d take them back!
“So we took them back, and dropped them off at a club in Wednesfield where they invited us in for a pint!
“That is what Dad was like, he always wanted to help.
“I had some incredible experiences and often think about the good memories that we shared and can’t believe it is 20 years since we lost him. The time soon goes.”
Harris, Wolves’ first ever Vice-President who would later also work closely with Sir Jack’s sons Jonathan during their respective tenures as chairmen, passed away at the age of 79 in 2005.
Wolves paid tribute with a special programme cover and minute’s silence at the following game against Sunderland – and in 2015, Harris was honoured with the Museum ‘bust’, shortly before his Stand’s name was changed to that of Sir Jack Hayward, a decision which John thinks would have caused the two to share a chuckle wherever they might be now.
Harris’s contribution stretches way beyond bricks and mortar, however. His place in the annals of club history is as richly deserved as it was so desperately needed.
John and wife Margaret are making a rare visit to Molineux for the forthcoming game with Leeds, to honour Jack’s memory, and the centenary of his birth.
And to remember the best of times, and happiest of times.
