When a chartered accountant and part-time footballer donned Wolves colours against Manchester United

It’s a few days after Christmas, that strange spell up to the New Year, and you’re back at work as an accountant, meeting a client in Wolverhampton.

At 22, you’re not far off completing your qualifications to become a fully-fledged chartered accountant, pursuing those studies alongside playing part-time football.

Then a call reaches you, from Wolves manager Ronnie Allen, that you need to report to the offices at Molineux on Waterloo Road, not far from the accountants’ office.

In a nutshell, the message is clear. “We need you to play for Wolves against Manchester United on Saturday.”

That’s Manchester United, the reigning First Division champions, who were again top of the table and a few months away from beating Benfica at Wembley to win their first ever European Cup.

Manchester United, with – amongst others - Alex Stepney in goal, Paddy Crerand, Brian Kidd, and the Holy Trinity, of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.

Manchester United, who had beaten Wolves 4-0 at Old Trafford on Boxing Day, and were heading to Molineux for a quickfire return four days later.

Yes, that Manchester United. That was what lay in store for Stewart Ross, on his Wolves debut, in front of a Molineux crowd of 53,940 back in 1967.

“It was a Saturday game just after Christmas and it might even have been the Friday I got that call,” Ross, who turned 80 in September, recalls.

“Then on the day of the game, I think my parents probably drove me in, and we had lunch at the old Molineux Hotel.

“We walked down the alley to the ground, and not many people knew me at that point, I could walk straight through!

“With over 50,000 inside Molineux I was very nervous as you can imagine, and then it was just about coming up against Best, Law and Charlton!

“There are parts of it I can remember, including a couple of tackles on George Best, winning the ball and getting support from the crowd for doing so!

“I was playing in midfield, and we were actually winning at half time, and then in the second half Graham Hawkins was injured and I moved into the back four.

“I can remember just after half time, Bobby Charlton played a one-two around me in the middle of the park, I never saw him, and he went straight down the other end and scored!

“It was a special day, although we ended up losing 3-2.”

It remains an incredible story. One which football of yesteryear was capable of delivering. Ross is surely the last part-time player to turn out for Wolves. It will definitely never happen again.

There is, of course, some context behind such an extraordinary tale of Christmas past. It wasn’t like Ross was literally dragged off the street, or indeed the accountant’s office, to play for Wolves against Manchester United.

His part-time football was with Wolves, where he had progressed from the fourth team playing in the Worcester Combination, to the third team in the West Midlands League, and then the reserves in the Central League.

But he was by no means a full-time professional, instead, opting for the more stable and sensible option of that alternative career in accountancy.

However, football had always been among Ross’s first loves, from being born in Woking and then brought up in Weymouth.

Kicking a ball against the wall, or a box in his garage, nurtured that passion for the game, before a job change for Ross’s father saw the family move to Wolverhampton when he was 12.

A regular in defence for Wolverhampton Grammar School, he also represented Staffordshire Grammar School and the Independent Schools XI.

With WGS, he captained the six-a-side team to victory in the national Public Schools Championships at Brentwood in Essex.

At one point, he was selected for the England Grammar Schools Under-18 squad to face Scotland, only to have to be withdrawn before the game.

“That was an unlucky one,” Ross recalls.

“I had been picked for the game but then it turned out that Scotland had a different age criteria to England, and I was slightly too old.

“So I missed out on that one.”

All the time however, Wolves were watching.

Scout George Noakes had seen him in action at school level where he stood out in more ways than one – “I was very tall for my age,” Ross reveals – and, at 14, a letter arrived from manager Stan Cullis inviting him to come and train.

However, some sage parental advice soon stepped in which perhaps helped Ross later build such a wide-ranging and stable career!

“My father wouldn’t let me go,” Ross admits.

“With my O-levels coming up not too long after, he wanted me to make sure I focused completely on my education.

“It was quite a thrill to receive a letter from Stan Cullis, but at the time, nothing came of it.”

A couple of years later however, Wolves were back again.

Ross, who had actually played in one practice game for the schoolboys as a centre forward rather than in defence, had been contemplating heading off to university before deciding to stay put and instead study to become a chartered accountant, pursuing his qualifications whilst working at a local practice.

Still keen to play football, he was back under the Wolves umbrella, training with the amateurs in the evening and being coached by the likes of Jack Dowen, Joe Gardiner and Alf Crook.

Wolves ran five or six different teams back then, from the first team and reserves through to others in different leagues, but at the end of his initial pre-season, when the teamsheets went up, Ross’s name wasn’t on any of them.

He asked the question as to why, or if he needed to move on to satisfy his desire for regular football, and was told it was an error and was soon put into the fourth team.

It was from there he progressed to the thirds and the reserves, still training on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and then, that incredible call, to take on the might of Manchester United.

“I knew some of the lads from playing in the reserves but apart from that I had never seen any of those Wolves professional footballers in terms of training with them,” says Ross.

“I hadn’t done a single training session with the first team, so if you talk about what are our plans? What are we doing? How we do this or how we do that? I hadn’t got a clue.

“I was brought into the team to replace Dave Burnside, and if we had walked past each other, neither of us would have known who the other was!

“I was just pitched in, probably because of the 4-0 defeat a few days before, but I had probably only spoken to Ronnie Allen about three times before he called me to play in the game!”

Ross made two further appearances for the Wolves’ first team. A certain new signing by the name of Frank Munro arrived from Aberdeen for the first of his 371 appearances against Everton at Molineux the following Saturday. During which Ross came off the bench late on to replace the injured Mike Bailey.

And then, in the following season, 1968/69, he came on as a substitute following another injury, to Dave Wagstaffe, in a goalless draw against West Bromwich Albion at the Hawthorns.

He is surely the most recent part-time footballer, even over half a century on, to wear the gold shirt. A landmark that will surely never be repeated.

Following his debut, Allen was keen for Ross to go full-time and become a fully-fledged professional, but he delayed as he wanted to complete his qualifications.

“I always felt that the big thing with accountancy was that I was in charge of my own career and my own future,” says Ross.

“In football, that was never going to be the case.

“I feel fortunate that I was able to go into both careers to a decent standard, and fantastically lucky to be able to do that.

“I can honestly say I never had any real regrets.

“Of course, there were times when I thought once or twice about whether I might have made it, whether I could have ended up in a team with Derek Dougan and John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt and John McAlle.

“And that is something I will never know.

“But I certainly have no regrets about the career I followed as an accountant, and have always been very comfortable about that decision.”

Ross ultimately moved on from Wolves after those three first team appearances made during six years at the club, but then enjoyed a very happy six years playing at a good standard with Telford United.

He would later also play for several years for Old Wulfrunians, returning to the club who he used to represent as a teenager, often playing for school in the morning and Old Wulfs in the afternoon.

Whilst at Telford, Ross enjoyed another chance to mix in the circles of footballing royalty. When England’s World Cup hero Geoff Hurst was Telford manager, in 1976 he brought the rest of the triumphant squad to Shropshire for a friendly fixture to raise funds for the Bucks.

Missing one of their number, the England XI included Wolves’ hero Dougan as a guest, and Ross found himself marking his fellow former Wolf!

“He did complain the once when I kicked him,” Ross recalls with a chuckle.

His own association with Wolves, and indeed Dougan, also returned many years on, albeit loosely, after his three senior appearances.

Dougan turned to him for advice and guidance when putting together the takeover package which, whilst ultimately falling sour, prevented the club from going out of

business in 1982.

“I knew Derek and he lived just around the corner from me in Codsall,” Ross recalls.

“He’d often call me and ask me to go around and see him at 9am, just to offer him financial advice through my firm.

“It was all fairly loose and was a reasonably short-ish spell, and I never became a director or anything like that.”

Ross worked for many years as a partner with Muras Baker Jones accountants, on Bath Avenue within a stone’s throw of Molineux, having previously spent almost 40 years with the firm previously known as BDO Stoy Hayward.

Sporting activity continued long after hanging his boots up with a membership at Wolverhampton Lawn Tennis & Squash Club, situated next to Wolves’ Compton training ground. Now living in Albrighton, he enjoys a regular round of golf at South Staffs Golf Club, where he is a past captain.

Ross still attends a handful of games a season at Molineux, and plans to be there on Monday night for the fixture he once played in, all those years ago.

Fair to say there won’t be any part-time players on show this time around!

“It’s a different world now, isn’t it?” he says.

“All I have really are the memories from my time with Wolves – there was only ever one photograph of me with the team – which was away at Southampton – and I have one piece of paper with all the signatures on.

“When they had the pre-season photographs, they never remembered me! I never even knew about it, and was always at work.

“Still, I got to turn out for Wolves, and start one of the three games I was involved in, which was against a great Manchester United team, who were top of the league at the time.

“If you were ever going to pick just one game to play in, you couldn’t get much better than that!”