The differing views of Wolves' special Grimsby Town trip - and a memorable Steve Bull hat-trick

The two sides haven’t met for 23 years, but in the 1990s and early 2000s were regular opponents in the Championship.  One memorable trip to Blundell Park featured an opening day Steve Bull hat trick, about which a few different voices look back with Paul Berry, finishing with a nod to what lies ahead on Sunday. And a couple of chippy recommendations!

THE GOALSCORER: STEVE BULL

We always seemed to go to Grimsby on a Tuesday night, when it was freezing cold, and lose 1-0.

But on that day, the first one of the season back in 1996/97, it was red hot.

We were like, ‘this ain’t Grimsby’, but it turned into an unbelievable afternoon.

For me, I scored a fair few goals on the opening day of seasons.  Mainly because I just couldn’t wait to get going!

After all those weeks of solid training, running until we dropped, I was just desperate to get out there and try and get on the scoresheet.

Going away from home on the opening day, you probably just wanted to make sure you took a point, but on that day we were clinical, and came away with all three.

Our fans filled that end behind the goal, which was fantastic to see, and I got the first two goals in front of them – I wish I’d got the third at that end as well.

All three came from assists from Froggy (Steve Froggatt) who was an absolutely brilliant player.

Him and Dales (Tony Daley) - it’s such a shame they had injury problems at Wolves because when they were fit, they were so good at supplying us.  

They would put the ball in the box, probably more so than wingers today, so we knew if we made the right runs, more often than not we’d have a chance.

That was a great day at Grimsby, the 17th of my 18 hat tricks, although I think I’ve only kept a couple of the matchballs.

I gave a lot of them away, to friends or charities.  For me, it was just about scoring the goals!

THE ASSISTER: STEVE FROGGATT

Grimsby away was a great start to the season and I was fortunate to have a couple of those during my time at Wolves.

A couple of years previously, my debut came on the opening day against Reading, and I managed to score early on before we got completely outplayed – and won 1-0!

Going into that 1996/97 season, I’d had a chat with Mark McGhee and said there were times playing as a winger when I had been a bit isolated, and that I wanted to become more involved in games.

He was changing the formation to using wing backs, which really helped, and on that day at Grimsby it still felt I was playing as a winger even though I was strictly a wing back.

I was up against their player manager Brian Laws, and managed to go past him and set Bully up for the first goal, before finding him with a through ball just before half time which he despatched by lobbing the keeper.