Wolves will re-open the gates to the club’s Hall of Fame next year and today we reveal the first two of seven new inductees – Bert Williams and Peter Broadbent. Martin Swain talked to Williams, the goalkeeper they called ‘The Cat’, about his award and memories of his fellow inductee’s career.

Bert Williams will be a busy man today. Eight visitors will be served tea and nostalgia at his home while they wallow in the memories which will flood the conversation as they study his expansive collection of memorabilia.

It is always like this with Wolves’ former England keeper, now a staggeringly sprightly 89. Warmth, generosity and great humility.

“I’m amazed, always amazed, at the interest people still have for those days,” he says explaining that his guests today have arranged the visit after reading Williams’s engaging pictorial book “The Cat in Wolf’s Clothing”, published 18 months ago.

He shouldn’t be, of course. Something special, something intangible, happened at Molineux during the Williams years which sustains the club even to this day and makes great demands of any who pull on its famous colours.

And it was inevitable that this great old goalkeeper would be an early arrival in The Hall of Fame along with his old team-mate Peter Broadbent.

They will join Jackery Jones, Stan Cullis, Billy Wright, Ron Flowers, Derek Parkin and Steve Bull who were inducted at the inaugural Hall of Fame dinner earlier this year.

The stature of both men in the story of Wolves remains uncompromised by the passage of time.

For those unfamiliar with Williams’s career, he was christened “The Cat” by the Italian media after a performance of outstanding agility for England and made 420 League and Cup appearances for Wolves, playing a major role in the 1949 FA Cup triumph and first-ever league championship five years later.

It was Williams who faced Honved, Moscow Spartak et al under the ground-breaking floodlit contests which brought us those iconic images revered to this day.

His memories are increasingly vital because time is taking its toll on the players who wrote Wolves’ history and the men and women who watched them.

And, I wondered, what were his of Broadbent?

“Peter?” he begins. “I’m a great believer that you cannot make footballers. They are not made, they are born. And Peter was a born footballer.”

Indeed, there is something special about the Broadbent legacy which sends supporters of now senior years all misty-eyed whenever he is mentioned.

There was something in his game, in his touch and ball skills, which Molineux had never seen before and to this day sees him regularly nominated as the most gifted outfield player ever to wear the gold and black.

Sadly, the man himself continues to fight the ravages of Alzheimer’s which have robbed him of the kind of total recall Williams enjoys.

But the image of Broadbent is fixed forever in the minds of those who watched him. Especially the old goalkeeper who saw him work his magic up the pitch as Wolves launched their attacks. You must remember Peter was a great player when there were a string of outstanding players in this country – Mortensen, Mannion, Matthews, Finney and so many more.

“It was a privilege, an absolute privilege, to watch Peter. He was a wonderful footballer.”

Like Williams, Broadbent was an integral member of that all-conquering 1950s side and, as a brilliant inside forward who wowed a generation of Molineux kids with his trickery and skills, one of his old admirers always tells me Broadbent was the first to unveil the “nutmeg” at Wolves – while scoring 145 goals from almost 500 appearances in his 14 years at Molineux.

Broadbent won three league championship medals in the 1950s, an FA Cup winners medal in 1960 and seven full England caps, a total diminished by the perception that the game of his great rival for the international slot Johnny Haynes had an extra degree or two.

Wolves fans always reckoned Haynes’s London address was a more telling advantage and take solace that it was their man who inspired and fired the imagination of a young Belfast boy as he watched the flickering black and white images of this legendary Wolves team. And George Best went on to do quite well in the game.

Broadbent’s wife Shirley admits it will be an “emotional” night on January 14 when she receives the Hall of Fame honour in her husband’s absence.

“I will feel very honoured to accept this accolade on Peter’s behalf, he would have loved it,” she says.

“I know what Wolves meant to him and he would be feeling very proud.”