Bring your boots, 3pm on Saturday!

The football boots of late Wolves star Les Smith are to be auctioned off along with an urgent telegram asking him to play in one of his first matches.

It was sent in the late 1940s by then Wolves manager Ted Vizard to Molineux winger Smith, who died in March this year. The simple note reads: "Want you to play in first team. Sat. Kick off 3.0. Bring father and mother. Vizard." Comparatively few people had telephones in the bleak, austere 1940s immediately after the end of the Second World War.

The telegram was often the only means of contacting someone in a hurry.

Smith, who was born at Halesowen on Christmas Eve in 1927, was 20 when he made his league debut for Wolves, one of Vizard's last games as Molineux boss at Stoke City on April 17, 1948.

Wolves won 3-2 with goals from Jimmy Mullen, Jesse Pye and Jimmy Dunn. Smith came on for the Wolves legend, Johnny Hancocks, who may have been injured.

Smith went on to make 88 league appearances for Wolves and scored 22 goals, but found it difficult to dislodge first choice right winger Hancocks, who scored 158 goals in 343 league games for Wolves.

In February 1956, Wolves sold Smith to Aston Villa for £25,000 – the equivalent cost of 10 houses.

A year later, Smith starred in Villa's FA Cup final triumph against Manchester United at Wembley.

He died aged 80 in March at Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge after battling throat and bowel cancer.

His football boots, three of his Wolves contracts and the Molineux telegram he and his family treasured are expected to fetch a total of £250.

They will be sold at Sotheby's Olympia in London next Wednesday.

Wolves goalkeeping legend Bert Williams, president of former players' association, said Les Smith would have been a "manager's dream".