Wolves' bankruptcy in 1982, 40 years on: How former players are still giving something back in old gold and black

The topic of conversation among Wolves fans this summer concerns the future of Ruben Neves and likely replacements from the Gestifute agency, with several top European youngsters linked with a move to Molineux. August brings a fifth straight season in the Premier League, with consecutive games against Liverpool and Manchester City to follow in September.

Forty years ago the talk was very different. Bankruptcy, receivership, administration, winding up orders. Wolves was a club on the brink. With no social media or internet to trawl, supporters hung on the words of the local Express & Star newspaper.

On 2 July 1982 the headline was the one fans feared the most: WOLVES HAVE GONE BUST. It heralded the darkest period in the club's entire history, with a further administration coming in 1986 on the back of the team's plummet from First to Fourth Division.

The club's travails began with the failure to pay off a loan secured to build a new stand in 1979. In June 1982 a power struggle at the top of the club saw Doug Ellis replace Harry Marshall as chairman. His first act was to request that Lloyds Bank called in the receiver on its £1.85million loan.

Over the next month, interested parties submitted their bids to buy the club, with the administrators securing a deal with Manchester-based property developers Mahmud Al-Hassan Bhatti and Mohammed Akbar Bhatti. The brothers were purported to have links to the Saudi royal family, but their ownership turned sour when they failed to secure a deal with the council for some land behind Molineux. With no recourse to secure the day-to-day funding needed, the club was allowed to rot with star players leaving, managers coming and going at an alarming rate and attendances dwindling.

Between 1984 and 1986 Wolves became the first club in history to suffer three successive relegations. On 18 March 1985 the lowest ever league crowd turned up at Molineux to watch a 1-1 draw with Bury. Jon Purdie and Micky Holmes were two who played in front of just 2,205 spectators that day with another, Neil Edwards, out injured.

Incredibly, all three men still play on today, representing the club in the guise of the Wolves All Stars, the former players' team who play in charity matches each season with the motto, 'Giving something back in old gold and black'. Earlier this summer they travelled to Spain for the Field of Dreams tournament against the veteran sides Mijas Old Boys and Walking Dead, at Finca Naundrup sports complex in Marbella.

"I was released by Arsenal at 18 years old and it wasn't that easy to get another club," Purdie reflects. "The offer of first team football was available at Wolves. There weren't many managers prepared to give a teenager an opportunity and it's perhaps only because Wolves were struggling so much financially and on the pitch that we got that chance. If they were doing well I wouldn't have got the opportunity, so there were positives to that situation as well. The club was certainly at a low ebb, there's no doubt about it."

Purdie made his debut on the opening day of the 1985/86 season, a campaign that would see Wolves relegated for the third year in a row. Edwards also made his first appearance in that match. A few weeks earlier he had been working as a roofer while playing in the West Midlands Regional League for Oldswinford. A colleague called him down from a roof to tell him Wolves were trying to get in touch.

"I came straight from non-league so was used to getting changed in ramshackle places," he explains. "I would have given anything to play at that stage because it was a professional contract. All my family were Wolves fans and to play for my hometown team was incredible. It's only looking back that I've realised what a massive achievement that was. It means so much."

Holmes joined the team three months later. "I didn't realise the state of the club until we got there," he says. "I came from Bradford on a Thursday and signed before having a proper look around the club. It wasn't until the next day that I saw what it was like, so I didn't realise what a bad state the place was in."

Wolves' reputation in the community was at an all-time low. It was not uncommon for local businesses to refuse work when the club came calling. On one occasion a coach driver arrived at Molineux to take the reserve team to a match at Grimsby and refused to depart until he was paid. With no money forthcoming he drove off leaving the players stranded. A 12-seater minibus was sourced, with a member of the backroom staff doubling up as driver and substitute.

After Tommy Docherty left in the summer of 1985, Sammy Chapman, Bill McGarry and Brian Little all took charge of the club before Graham Turner arrived early in the 1986/87 season. By the start of that first campaign in the Fourth Division the Bhatti brothers had been forced out after the club fell into receivership for a second time. The Labour-controlled Wolverhampton Council stepped in to help secure Wolves' future, with Birmingham construction firm J.J. Gallagher purchasing the club and renting the stadium from the council.

The deal was a huge relief for supporters after the administrators had at one stage proposed Wolves swapped places with non-league Enfield, who had finished as Conference champions, in the days before promotion and relegation between the two divisions.

By now Wolves had sold their training facility at Castlecroft and often used some land in the middle of Wolverhampton racecourse, among other venues. One Friday, when not even the racecourse was available, Turner took the bibs and cones out onto the car park behind the North Bank stand and marked out a makeshift pitch. The team won the next day and so a tradition was born.

"We loved the car park training on a Friday because it was a set of brilliant lads and we'd have trained anywhere really," Holmes said. "You'd try not to fall over because you'd end up with grit in your hands and knees. We all mucked in, we were so close - Andy Mutch is godfather to my son."

"I used to have to go off after training to the Cash & Carry to get the drinks to run the Players' Bar on the Saturday because the club couldn't afford to set anything up themselves," Purdie adds. "We didn't have much, but we had a great group of players who bonded brilliantly and when you start winning games there is no better feeling."

That winning feeling under Turner was in no small part down to the goals of Steve Bull - 102 in the league across just two seasons - as Wolves climbed from Fourth to Second Division. The renaissance brought new ownership too, with Sir Jack Hayward buying the club in 1990 and securing its long-term future.

As the team continued to develop, Holmes, Purdie and Edwards found themselves sidelined and had to look elsewhere to continue their careers. But they remain hugely proud of the part they played in helping the club battle through its darkest hour.

"You get Wolves fans who'd give their right arm just to represent Wolves once," Purdie continues. "To be able to say you played over 100 times for them, nobody can take that away."

And many years on from retirement, the lure of putting on the boots is as strong as ever. Edwards took a coaching session with local youngsters on the morning of the Field of Dreams tournament before joining the Wolves All Stars line-up with Holmes, Purdie and several other players from the 1980s including Paul Jones and Jackie Gallagher.

"I was an apprentice at Wolves who never made it and looked up to these guys," says tournament organiser Simon Dunkley, who was a youth team player during the Bhatti brothers' era. Dunkley moved out to Calahonda on the Costa del Sol earlier this year to pursue his second career as a blues and motown musician. "Getting the chance to play with them again is fantastic. It's the players who haven't quite made it to the top who seem to want to do a bit more too, they understand the importance of where they've been and what they can offer. A lot of them have been released during their career and it seems to bring them together. We all just want to play football really, and to be associated with the old gold and black, well it is special all over the world, isn't it?"

The Field of Dreams tournament raised funds for the neo-natal unit at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton as well as a football academy in Marbella.

"We're all in our fifties now and like a couple of beers, but we want to give back to the community where possible," Edwards adds. "We don't see each other very often but we're certainly friends for life and when we get back together it's like we've never been apart. That's what football does for you. The dressing room mentality is hard to describe."

None of the players earned enough to retire once their football careers ended and have spent most of their adult life in employment outside football. Edwards lives in Hemel Hempstead and runs his own handyman business, Purdie is an estate planner with a solicitors' firm in Stourbridge after formerly coaching young players at the Samui United Academy in Thailand and Holmes sells stairlifts for a Kingswinford-based company.

"I think what we have is unique because the Wolves All Stars is made up mostly from our generation," Holmes reflects. "The current Wolves team will probably go their separate ways and move back to Portugal and all the other countries they're from, so you won't see this again."

The club of today is unrecognisable from the Wolves of 40 years ago but, as long as they stay fit enough, the players from that 1980s nadir will serve as a reminder of just how far that progression has extended, while giving their bit back in old gold and black.

Win £250,000 with Super 6!

Another Saturday, another chance to win £250,000 with Super 6. Play for free, entries by 3pm