Hard to believe this memory is now very nearly twenty years ago, but it was one of those moments when football fandom and hero worship meshed perfectly into a gold-tinged memory which has almost become a mental shorthand for my childhood days watching my team.
It was a pretty meaningless end-of-season game for both Wolves and Sunderland, in May 1994. Neither team was going anywhere. Neither had much to play for. I had just a few more weeks left before my secondary school days were over, and I'd spent my weekly paper round money on a ticket for the South Bank to see Wolves play Sunderland.
Don Goodman, who very soon after would go on to join Wolves, scored for Sunderland, but "our" goal that night was as close to what in my mind's eye makes the "perfect" goal as it's possible to be.
It was a gorgeous, golden early summer's evening. Molineux had only recently become a shiny new four-sided ground again, and that night the Old Gold seats, shirts and stadium fittings seemed to shimmer. A long ball was played forward towards the goal I was sitting behind. On Wolves left hand side, Steve Bull, our hero, our talisman, turned and with sheer brute force blasted a wonderful shot high into, I think, Tony Norman's goal. What made the goal all the better was the goalkeeper's sprawling full-length dive. A goal which had it all. Scored by one of the heroes of my childhood, barely a few feet in front of me.
The game, meaningless that it was, finished appropriately enough in a stale 1-1 draw, but that goal, and the image it has forever planted in my mind sums up some very happy days, days of innocence, watching football for the sheer love of the game, and my team.
Dan is a freelance football commentator
Follow Dan on Twitter @danohagan
Memory added on March 18, 2013
Comments (Add your voice)
No comments have yet been added to this memory.
