How the Stan Cullis Stand changed

Wolves columnist John Lalley has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of what will become the new Stan Cullis Stand in 50 years on the terraces at Molineux.

With yet another new season imminent, the construction of the new stand at the Bushbury end of Molineux is an extremely exciting innovation and a clear indication of the club's ambitions for the future.

For veteran Wolves fans like me, it hardly seems a generation ago that the legendary Stan Cullis was modestly snipping the ribbon to mark the opening of the new North Bank named in his honour back in 1992.

Younger Wolves followers will no doubt have some difficulty imagining the depths of anger and despair which engulfed those of us who followed the club back in the mid 1980's.

Molineux remarkably had descended into a shambolic and ugly eyesore, the stadium, if such a word was even remotely applicable, had been allowed to degenerate into a virtual slum dwelling.

It was a neglected decaying relic, crumbling on its foundations and a gaping architectural insult to a remarkable club and to the scores of great players who had proudly worn a gold shirt.

It was a betrayal of a special heritage and the darkest period in the club's existence. Looking back now, the entire ghastly scenario simply beggars belief.

As stunning visual evidence of this harrowing demise, there stood the remains of the North Bank, bleached of all colour, reduced to a dilapidated ruin, standing pitifully like a discarded doll's house stuck in its own time warp.

The fabulous 'cowshed' where a legion of kids, like me, had first been enthralled with the Wolves.

The excitement as we paid a few pennies at the turnstiles and scurried to the front to sit on the wall by the red shale perimeter, hoping that the coppers on duty wouldn't make us stand behind the barrier come kick-off time.

Immediately, from the first visit to see Bolton easily dispatched in August 1960, I was totally and hopelessly hooked into a lifetime addiction.

Cup holders, league champions in two of the previous three seasons, the glory years seemed destined to last forever.

Sadly, they didn't and, by the middle of the decade, Wolves inexplicably were relegated and desperately seeking fresh impetus.

During the next two seasons out of the top division, the North Bank became the focal point of Molineux, the catalyst to celebrate the revival of the Wolves.

Dwarfed as it was by the massive South Bank facing it from the hotel end, the 'cowshed' took up the challenge head on.

Surrounded in the midst of an aroma of fags, Bovril and blocked urinals, a sweeping mass of Wolves-mad humanity was happily thrust together in a sardine tin of rib-crushing intimacy.

We wallowed in it and took on an air of superiority believing that the fans on the other three sides of Molineux were a bunch of buttoned-up killjoys lacking our enthusiasm for the club.

It was nonsense of course but gratifying all the same! As the likes of Dave Wagstaffe, Derek Dougan and Mike Bailey shaped their legendary status, the passion of the North Bank knew no bounds.

The corrugated sheeting at the back was incessantly hammered and the wooden steps beneath the dingy old roof were stamped on ferociously, to back the decibel shredding chanting and singing that reverberated to crescendo levels during every match.

On a good day - and there were plenty - it was spell binding and you just couldn't wait for the next game.

The rapport with the players was unique, they thrived on the atmosphere created for them and when promotion was gained in 1967, the entire place went blissfully mental.

Fantastic days, crush barriers, terraces and the joys of standing room only!

But nothing good lasts indefinitely and surely no club ever descended with such a resounding bump as we did.

By 1980, despite a magnificent League Cup triumph at Wembley, Molineux was disfigured.

Lopsided and disjointed with the magnificent new John Ireland stand stranded in the distance, almost as if the construction was deliberately isolating itself from the rest of Molineux which was rapidly falling into terminal disrepair.

Wolves satisfied the demands set by the receiver by a harrowing three minutes in a frantic takeover fronted by Derek Dougan in 1982.

Even now, it's a sadness to gaze at the picture of 'the Doog,' suited in all his finery, joining the fans on the North Bank terraces to mark his first game as Wolves new chairman.

Dougan was rapturously acclaimed - after all, he had been and remained the biggest hero in 'cowshed' folklore. But after a remarkable early surge, the revival was simply a mirage.

Poignant it was to see Dougan, the uncrowned king of the North Bank, left to lick his wounds frustrated and discredited totally incapable of arresting our demise.

The inevitable outcome was heartbreaking, Molineux lost its soul and almost its very existence.

Humiliatingly, the North Bank along with the Waterloo Road stand was summarily closed deemed unsafe and unfit for human habitation.

Graham Turner's managerial reign saw our dignity regained but, exciting as the revival undoubtedly was, it remained a source of the greatest regret that, as Steve Bull piled in a mass of fabulous goals, not a soul was standing on the North Bank to savour a single one of them.

Instead, Bull and his colleagues had to content themselves with their pre-match Friday morning training routine on the cinders and broken bricks of the equally shabby car park.

If any professional player received instructions to train in such an environment these days, a mutiny would accrue!

Mercifully, regeneration soon followed,; Sir Jack Hayward oversaw the kind of redevelopment that ensured that once again our stadium was fit to be called Molineux.

The rust and the weeds of the 'cowshed' were finally laid to rest, the North Bank duly disappeared but its memory remains as fresh as ever. Absolutely priceless, it really was.

For the last 20 years, the Stan Cullis Stand has done justice to its name but something a whole lot better awaits us in the near future. I for one cannot wait to savour the outcome.

Another Wolves season dawns and nostalgia for old gits like me drifts that bit further into history.

I am quite looking forward to at least part of this season being relocated to the Steve Bull Stand and, no doubt, the experience will be positive.

But old habits die hard and, when the time comes, I suspect that I will be yearning for a return to my spiritual home.

The opulence and high tech glamour of the new stand will be in stark contrast to the 'cowshed' that is for sure, but the enjoyment of the old place is an experience I would not like to have missed.

Here's to a good Wolves campaign!