Wolves teenage debutant Harry Burgoyne back at Molineux as he looks for next opportunity after 'tough' Morecambe experience

A bubbly and ever-enthusiastic personality, whose willingness to contribute as a team player is as strong as the focus on his own performance, Burgoyne is one of those presences who adds a positive element to any football dressing room.

But now finding himself without a club, for the first time since starting with Wolves Academy at the age of 12, it is understandable that the Ludlow-born gloveman is finding life a bit tougher than normal.

Shorn of the opportunity to play football.  Denied the daily routine of training and matches that every professional relishes following with such natural and metronomic regularity.

He has just come out of the most successful personal season of his career in terms of appearances, making 34 for Morecambe in League Two, albeit in a campaign which ended in relegation.  Within that challenge, he was kept very busy between the sticks.

Burgoyne, though, was committed to sticking it out and trying to help the Shrimps swim straight back to the Football League, only to become one of many players to be affected by the club’s long-standing financial difficulties.

An ownership dispute between then custodian Jason Whittingham and the Bond Group, and investors and prospective owners Panjab Warriors, led to an impasse which left the whole club in limbo.

Suspended from league football, with players and staff not being paid, Burgoyne left it as long as possible over the summer before deciding to cancel his contract in the hope he hadn’t left it too late to pursue a fresh opportunity away from the club.

Then, a fortnight later, the takeover went through, and with Panjab Warriors in control, Morecambe were able to continue their 105-year history, and make a belated start to the National League season.

Calls from Burgoyne’s agent to the club to see if they might still need him went unanswered, and opportunity hasn’t knocked elsewhere.

And so, for the first time in over a decade of being a professional, Burgoyne finds himself without a footballing home.

It’s a chastening story. Although one where the footballing family, and the goalkeeping union, has come to the fore with Wolves allowing him to train and use the facilities at Compton.

“It’s been a tricky time,” Burgoyne admits, perhaps understandably lacking his customary effervescence.

“The new owners had been trying to buy the club for a long time, and had been investing, but at the end of the season things got difficult and they stopped putting money in until they could take over.

“After the pay packet we received in May, we weren’t paid afterwards, and it was like torture for players and staff.

“We returned for pre-season with all that excitement about getting ready for a new campaign, but we weren’t getting paid and, with a transfer embargo in place, there were only about seven or eight of us in training.

“The manager did everything he could but the communication from the top wasn’t done properly before the takeover.

“We were going in every day preparing for a season which we didn’t know was going to start, and we’d turn up in the morning being told we were going to get paid, and it just never happened.

“When you’ve got a young family to support, obviously that’s not nice, but I wanted to give it as long as I could because I loved being at Morecambe and it’s such a great club.

“I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and was actually one of the last to leave, and only cancelled my contract because I felt I might miss the boat elsewhere.

“As it turned out, clubs had all sorted out their goalkeepers so I had missed the boat, and I now find myself in a very difficult situation.

“I am relying on getting an opportunity from somewhere, whether it’s a lack of form or an injury which isn’t nice, but that is where I’m at and it’s been tough.”

It’s not the first time Burgoyne has found himself a slave to misfortune through no fault of his own.

There was the time he was all set to join Bury on loan in League One, only for them to be expelled from the Football League.  The time he went to Plymouth on loan, but broke his ankle in pre-season. Was all set to move to Salford City, but the forms were submitted five minutes too late. Joined Shrewsbury full of hope and optimism. And then Covid hit and the league was abandoned. 

Little wonder that he still holds onto some words from former Wolves goalkeeping coach Pat Mountain who was at Molineux when he made his first team breakthrough.