The Wolves promotion hero and the new life he has 'built' outside of football

But in the Wolves case, promotion helped pave the way for some of the longer-term successes which have followed. Paul Berry caught up with the former defender to chat about life during and after football.

When fans swarmed the pitch to celebrate Wolves’ promotion after victory against Crewe at Gresty Road, there was a picture of defender Scott Golbourne, a huge grin on his face in the midst of the joyous mob.

It was a triumph which followed the disaster 12 months earlier of a second successive relegation with the club in turmoil and, in the words of then chief executive Jez Moxey, needing to ‘lance the boil’.

It was also a moment when Golbourne, one of several brought in to help steady the ship under Head Coach Kenny Jackett, was able to fully appreciate and understand just what Wolves means to their devoted fanbase.

“I remember that moment and pitch invasion and just thinking, ‘wow’, because of seeing just how happy the fans were and what it meant to them,” he recalls.

“For me, we had done what we were all brought in to do, to win promotion from League One.

"The club should have been much higher than that position, they had achieved so much previously and have done since.

“But even though it was League One, it was still such a significant moment and something which people still stop me to talk about now.

“I know it is still regarded as a bit of a turning point, after such a difficult couple of years, and it feels like we were part of the regeneration of the club and the start of the ascendancy to high level football.

“And that moment, I could see and feel just how much it meant the world to people, and the impact of what we had achieved. Good times!”

Golbourne had been brought in the previous summer alongside others such as skipper Sam Ricketts and Kevin McDonald to join the experience and leadership of Carl Ikeme, Richard Stearman, Dave Edwards and Danny Batth in underpinning the Molineux revival. 

Coupled, of course, with the explosive firepower of Bakary Sako, and later Nouha Dicko, James Henry and Michael Jacobs, and a group of young and hungry hopefuls. 

And yet, the decision for Golbourne to join the ranks wasn’t necessarily a straightforward one. He had become a Championship regular at left back with Barnsley, and was faced with the dilemma of dropping down a division to a club which had suffered a painful decline over the previous two seasons.

“I had managed to cement myself as a Championship left back and other clubs in the same division had also shown interest, including Blackburn,” Golbourne reveals.

“When the call came from Wolves even my family were a bit confused because I had worked so hard to get up to Championship level – it was my dream to play in the Premier League and they found it difficult to understand why I would go one step the other way!]

“But I knew some of the lads at Wolves from playing against them, and I knew Stears (Richard Stearman) from England junior teams, and I could sense that there was this rebuild bubbling, which drew me to the club.

“I have always been someone who looks at the bigger picture, more of a longer term thinker, both in football and business, and to me, I felt like although I was going toLeague One it was going to give me a better chance of reaching the Premier League.

“I looked at Wolves and felt that over the following few years that was where they were heading, and I wanted to be a part of it.

“We so nearly did it as well!” 

They did indeed. Over the second half of the 2014/15 season, following League One promotion, they built up a strong head of steam and momentum that took them so tantalisingly close to the play-offs.

“It was a freak season, in terms of how many points it needed to reach the top six,” says Golbourne.

“If we’d have got there, I am convinced we would have won them.

“We were on such a good run and I was speaking to players from other teams who were frightened of what we could do with how aggressive we were from the back and the talent we had up front.

“But we’d had a really bad run around the November time when I think we lost five in a row, and for a team trying to challenge in the Championship, that is always going to set you back.

“We left ourselves too much to do, and although we did then click into gear, we just couldn’t get over the line.”

Golbourne, at 36 now pursuing a second successful chapter in the world of property and development, has always been an articulate and deep thinker off the pitch aswell as on it, hence his inclination to take a step back in his career with Wolves in order to go so close to taking two steps forward.

But his desire to try and forge a career in the game in the first place was more down to a ‘lightbulb’ moment than any sort of structured ambition.

As a young football fan growing up in Bristol, Golbourne spent plenty of time in the holidays at the house of his cousin – Matt Hill – who preceded him by a few years in the Molineux left back berth and also won a league winners medal for the Championship title success in 2008/09.

Hill was certainly a role model, after Golbourne had first been taken to football by his Grandad, who was involved in the running of a Sunday League team, and then took him to watch Bristol City.

“I remember when Pops first took me to watch Bristol City, I just thought it was like the Sunday League teams, that they were playing for fun and had to go back to work on the Monday,” he laughs.

“That was when he told me that, if I was good enough, I could do it for a living, and that was the lightbulb moment.

"So, from the age of about eight or nine, becoming a footballer is all that I was aiming to do, thinking that it would be an ideal job if I could make it!

“And in so many respects, Matt was key for me.

“He’s seven years older and when I was growing up in Bristol City’s Academy, he was a role model and was blazing a pathway which I was then able to follow.

“He’d look after me, and I’d go over to his house in the holidays to play football.

“We both played for Bristol City, and Wolves, and Barnsley, so it almost felt like I was following him around.

“Having somebody like Matt who had made it happen and carved out a career made me realise what I needed to do to be able to follow in the same footsteps, and thatmap was set out for me.”

Golbourne soon started to map out his own career, making 15 senior appearances with Bristol City, six with Reading – one of which was to prove his solitary experience of the Premier League – along with several loan spells with Wycombe, Bournemouth and Oldham. 

Bournemouth, Wolves’ next opponents this coming weekend, were a very different club to now back in 2007/08, and perhaps taught Golbourne lessons which he learned from both in football and in life.

“It was a really eye opening experience because it was the first time for me of seeing a business on its knees,” he explains.

“There were four of us who went on loan from Reading – James Henry was another– and it almost felt like it was a favour because they were short of players and were really struggling.

“We were asked to leave the hotel because they hadn’t paid the bill, and the one day we came back and all our stuff had been moved to the cellar – we started commuting after that!

“I got a few games under my belt which was great but it also made me see football in a different way, it was very sad in many ways.

"But then to think about how they are now compared to then, not just within the football system in the Premier League but also as an entity and a club and a business…it’s an unbelievable story.”

Golbourne’s own story continued with Exeter before the move to Barnsley and then Wolves, where that first season in particular, delivered so many highlights.

The 3-0 win at high-flying Brentford – another club to have since progressed all the way to the Premier League – is one such positive memory, along with the Crewe pitch invasion, 6-4 mayhem against Rotherham, and scoring on his home league debut against Swindon.

“It was such a special year when so many good things happened, on and off the pitch,” he recalls.

“We had a special team, with just the right fusion and blend of players ability-wise and with the character that was needed to turn around a club which had got a bit toxic and had been really struggling.

"Off the pitch too, moving to the Midlands proved a great step as we bought our family home where we still live now, so it was about laying the foundations for what was ahead.

“Everything was aligned and we felt really settled and liked it, so it proved to be a really significant part of our lives.”

Coming to Wolves was also a time when Golbourne was expanding his interests and looking towards business and the property sector which would become his key focus after football, attending seminars and conferences after training to broaden his knowledge base.

He had also delved into other areas including a sportswear brand, tied in with a love of creativity and design shared with wife Keshia, who is also an excellent seamstress who had studied fashion at college.

And no interview with Golbourne can be complete without a mention of his own eye for fashion, and the sense of style and panache which was not only the talk of the dressing room but also once earned him the accolade of ‘Best Dressed Male’ at Birmingham Fashion Week.

It was inspired, in part, by his manager at Exeter, Paul Tisdale, whose friend owned the Ted Baker retail chain at the time, and would wear refined and incredibly well-tailored gentleman’s attire, even whilst directing operations on the touchline.

“I loved what Paul used to wear, it was wicked, and that sort of individuality and people being themselves stuck with me and is something I have carried forward ever since,” says Golbourne.

“I have always enjoyed fashion and trying to introduce character and colour and I embraced it in football right from day one.

“A lot of the time it is about what you are comfortable in, and I always remember lads in football initially being shocked by my clothes but then starting to look forward to seeing what I was wearing when arriving in the morning.

“It helped to break down barriers, and people realised they could be more individual and wear something that was a bit different, and the jokes and mickey-taking were all part of the fun.

“Obviously there is always that balance and you don’t want to end up doing something that the manager isn’t keen on, but in my time, fashion was something that very much became a part of the dressing room.”

Post-Wolves, next dressing room stop for Golbourne was a return to Bristol City, then MK Dons and, finally, a very happy two-and-a-half years with Shrewsbury, where he was signed by Ricketts and re-united with Edwards.

By now, his growing property interests were taking up a large proportion of his commitments and, also mindful of the need for plenty of family time with three children, Golbourne decided to hang up his boots at the age of 33.

“Shrewsbury was the perfect place for me to finish my career, it’s a good club which was trying to play good football and was also close to home,” he explains.

"When football stopped during lockdown, property and construction were still considered key trades, so, with the right measures in place, our property work could continue.

“When we came back, I was still really enjoying the football but with my family growing, and the business growing, I had to make a tough decision.

“It almost caught me off guard a little, but I knew that to make the business work I would have to do it full-time, and so decided to call it a day on the football.

“It is always hard to replace, as every player will tell you, but I do love this side of things, and feel fortunate to have found something else that I really enjoy."

It’s a property journey for Golbourne which will have been going a decade next year, and it is also one which has involved several different strands.

Whilst obviously there is the need, in a hugely competitive industry, to make it a success commercially, there has also been a level of altruism to his motivation, which has included working in social housing and energy efficiency which saw him feature on a BBC documentary a couple of years ago.

“I enjoy all the different aspects of property and construction, including the creative element and the development side,” Golbourne explains.

“I like taking something which is rundown and not particularly useful to anybody and transforming it into a home where people can raise a family.

“Unfortunately, the demand for social housing is huge, and standards aren’t particularly great in Birmingham, and it’s an area I feel I can provide an impact in making sure we can produce a nice living space.

“Energy efficiency was also something that we became interested in whilst renovating these properties, because it’s not just about finding people somewhere to live, but also making them as affordable as possible.

“Even if the rent is affordable, it’s not much use if the bills are sky high, so going down that energy efficiency route is another one which we have taken.

“We have also moved into the care home sector over the last couple of years, which is another challenge in terms of developing unique specifications to create environments that are user-focused and make people’s lives as easy as possible.

“We have a lot of meetings with councillors and planners and I really enjoy connecting with all sorts of different people including architects and creative and innovative thinkers within the space.

“There are so many different conversations taking place and so many exciting challenges which are certainly keeping me occupied.

“It has proved the perfect replacement for football, it gets me out of bed in the morning and has given me something to apply myself to, just like football did.

”There are also more plans afoot. Having previously donated a percentage of a previous clothing business to support a school in Senegal, Golbourne has also bought some land in the Gambia where he is proposing to build some houses.

In the longer term, he would also like to become involved in consultancy work advising young footballers who want to invest in property whilst still playing, as another potential avenue for them to consider after retirement.

“There are a lot of stresses involved for players when they finish and for those who want to have something ready and waiting and, as someone who has been through it all and can maybe guide them a little bit, I’d like to be able to help.”

Golbourne, whether while being mobbed in a celebratory pitch invasion, helping create a property for people to savour and enjoy, or offering advice to future investors of the future, will always know just what it means.