Johnny Phillips' Bitten By Wolves: Paul Butler’s bumpy ride to Millennium dream

The 2002/03 First Division season began with supporters still smarting from the play-off failure against Norwich City the previous May.

With the summer arrivals of Denis Irwin and Paul Ince, from Manchester United and Middlesbrough respectively, manager Dave Jones had acquired some stellar talent and experience.

But the campaign did not begin as the players and management hoped. A 3-1 home defeat to Sheffield United on October 5 left Wolves 14th after 11 games.

The fans had not forgotten the troubled end to the previous season and the skipper, Paul Butler, was their target.

“We didn’t start all that well. The fans were coming for someone and they came for me,” Butler recalls. “Not a problem, I’d rather they come for me than the young lads. Dave pulled me out of the team and Mark Clyde went in and did a great job.”

For a man of Butler’s standing in the team, and presence on the pitch, it must have been difficult to come to terms with. He had to cope with supporters barracking from the stands and an omission from the side, but he never flinched in the face of the challenge.

“It was tough. But I wasn’t showing that they hurt me, I was basically out there every day just training”, he says.

“I think that’s why I have a closeness with the fans now because they know I could have easily walked and gone somewhere else but I stuck around, I accepted I wasn’t playing well.

“I was the captain of the team and, if anything, Dave did well by pulling me out. It felt like bad luck after bad luck. Goals going in in the 89th minute when we were comfortable and me getting it from the fans again, but it happens – this is what football is about. It’s their opinion. You don’t take it personally, I loved my time here.”

It was the advice of two former team-mates which kept Butler going during his darkest hours.

“I always remember speaking to Steve Bould and Kevin Ball, two lads I played at Sunderland with and two lads I speak with to this day.

“They told me to get my head down and work twice as hard to get back in the team. Don’t walk in and say that you want away, because that’s easy. Show the manager, play your reserve games, train as captain of the club and wait for the opportunity. Mark played well for 10 or 11 games and then he got injured. The gaffer pulled me in over Christmas and said, ‘You’ve got your chance’.”

It was a New Year’s Day league match at home to Derby County that saw Butler restored to the starting line-up.

Wolves drew the game 1-1, but it was the next Molineux fixture that supporters recall with real pride. Sir Bobby Robson’s Premier League title-challenging Newcastle United were in town for an FA Cup third round tie that proved to be the catalyst for a return to form.

“There was a lot of animosity between the players,” Butler remembers.

“Craig Bellamy was pointing to the Premier League badge on his arm.

“It was a real Cup tie and you could sense it. The pitch was a bit heavy, not like it is now at Molineux.

“It was good, you had two honest teams going for it. Alan Shearer gave as good as he got. Me and Joleon (Lescott) tried to boot him up and down the pitch and he gave it back.

“To come out at the end of that and win 3-2, it kick-started our season because we walked off the pitch having done that to Newcastle, who were third or fourth in the Premier League.

“Without the gaffer needing to say anything, that started us off.”

That January five-goal thriller was the first game in a Cup run that took Wolves all the way to the quarter-finals, where they lost 2-0 to Southampton on the south coast.

Far from the FA Cup providing a distraction, the team found a new lease of life in the league. From 10th place at the time of the Newcastle tie, they pushed up the table to finish fifth.

They entered the First Division play-offs on a high, with two ties against Berkshire club Reading standing in the way of the club’s first appearance in a divisional play-off final since they faced Aldershot over two legs at the end of the 1986/87 Fourth Division season.

“We had a feeling for that Reading semi-final. You count on one hand those games in your career when you know you’ll be all right and that was one of them,” Butler adds.

“Training was good, you came in every day and everyone couldn’t wait to train.

“The thing you get with a successful team is that there are never any injuries, everyone wants to play. When you’re having a bad time there’s always plenty out injured. We knew we were playing well because there was no-one injured. We had this belief that we could dig it out if we wanted to because we had the characters in there.

“We had flair in the team with Mark Kennedy and Shaun Newton and the four strikers were unbelievable – Kenny Miller, Nathan Blake, Dean Sturridge and George Ndah.

“They would get in any Championship side at that time so we knew we’d score goals. But it was the belief that we were all in it together.”

Newton’s deflected shot and a Lee Naylor free-kick earned a 2-1 first leg victory before Alex Rae scored the only goal in a 1-0 win down in Berkshire. It set up a play-off final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff which gave supporters the greatest day out in a generation...

Bitten by Wolves: Stories from the Soul of Molineux is on sale now at the Wolves club shop, Waterstones, WHSmith and Amazon.