When Wolves lost a star to God
On the verge of an England call-up in September 1969, Wolves winger Peter Knowles jacked in the beautiful game for a higher calling as a Jehovah’s Witness. FFT finds out why
As Peter Knowles prepared to fly to the USA during the summer of ’69 and earn some cash in the North American Soccer League, the much-loved Wolves winger had the world at his feet.
Film star looks, a £100-a-week salary, swooning women, a sports car with his name inscribed on the side, a potential spot in England’s 1970 World Cup squad and rumours of a close-season transfer to Bill Shankly’s Liverpool.
Little wonder, then, that four months later a desperate Molineux crowd were imploring the then 23-year-old to stay put in the Black Country.
“Please don’t leave us, please don’t leave us, please don’t leave us Peter Knowles,” supporters belted out, with tears in the eyes of some.
They were too late. Knowles was off, but not to Anfield to work with Shankly as many Wolves fans had feared. No, it was far worse than that. Knowles had decided to walk away from the game completely. He was to dedicate his life to spreading the gospel according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Despite his protestations that Wolves’ First Division clash against Nottingham Forest on September 6, 1969 would be the last match he’d ever play, few felt that the Yorkshire-born inside forward would be gone for long.
Wolves boss Bill Mcgarry wrote in his programme notes that Peter’s training kit would be laid out again on Monday, and he fully expected him to be there.
“Well,” says Wolves fan and regular contributor to the Express and Star newspaper, John Lalley, “almost 50 years on, we’re still waiting for him!”
Indeed, the club even kept Knowles’ registration for 12 years in the hope he would return to football.
It was shortly after Peter’s wedding in 1968 that a knock on the door changed his life. Already an England Under-23 international, he was talked about as a potential bolter among Alf Ramsey’s 1970 World Cup party.
But Knowles was an unlikely convert to the door-to-door preachers who all believed in strict adherence to the Bible to avoid the impending Armageddon.
“He was so talented,” Hugh Curran, who joined Wolves in 1969, tells FFT. “His touch was fantastic and he had everything – a natural finisher, too.”
Knowles was just 18 when he made his Wolves bow in 1963, replacing an injured Peter Broadbent – a mercurial club legend and England international. There could be no higher praise than the early comparisons with Broadbent.
Initially, Knowles combined his life as a committed Christian and football player with enviable talents. But it was on the tour to Missouri – where Wolves would compete in the NASL under the banner of Kansas City Spurs – that his thoughts crystallised.
“One of the main things I remember about the matches in America was the fact that he wouldn’t stand when the national anthem was played as it was against their beliefs,” explains Curran. “It didn’t really seem to affect the way he played too much, though, as he was still a regular scorer.”
Curran maintains that Knowles was “talked into becoming” a Jehovah’s Witness. Others cite the influence of former Wolves season ticket holder, Harold Somerville – also the presiding minister of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Knowles invited Somerville along to Molineux to watch the game against Southampton in August 1969, and the man described by the Daily Express as his “religious boss” wasn’t impressed.
“It was full of fouls,” huffed Harold. “The pressure is always there on the field to retaliate. But the Bible says: ‘Turn the other cheek.’”
And soon after that match, Knowles announced he would be retiring in six weeks’ time. Not even a visit from his mum, who pleaded with him to alter course, could force a change of heart. A dark cloud soon shrouded the city. “There were girls holding up pictures and banners saying, ‘Peter don’t leave us’ on the old Waterloo Road entrance to the ground,” says Lalley. “The whole place was just in shock.”
A similar mood pervaded inside the Wolves dressing room.
“We didn’t hear it directly from him, we heard it through the grapevine at the club,” reveals Curran. “I don’t think many of us really believed that was it. A lot of us thought he would be back, if not the following week then in the not-too-distant future.”
Centre-back Frank Munro told of how he had tried to talk to Knowles but was given the brush-off. Some players, he told The Guardian in 2008, thought that Knowles’ decision to go and turn his back on the game was partly down to his wife. “We all thought at the time that it was a bit of a gimmick,” he said. “We thought that he would be back in six weeks and we’d laugh it off.” However, Knowles found it difficult to reconcile his responsibilities to his faith and those as a footballer. “Five days a week I’m a Christian, but then when Saturday comes and I put on a football shirt I am not a Christian – you have to be a Christian every day,” he told The Times a few days before his final Wolves appearance. Peter’s penultimate game for the club came against Spurs – and older brother Cyril – in a League Cup tie, on an emotional night in front of a Molineux crowd of almost 40,000. The cover of the match programme featured a picture of both Knowles siblings shaking hands beneath the headline, ‘Oh Brother’. “There was an incredible atmosphere that night,” says Lalley. “You just got the feeling that you were watching something special.”
Wolves won the game 1-0, with both of the Knowles brothers having storming evenings under the floodlights at one of English football’s most iconic stadiums.
Four days later, Knowles removed his boots for the last time as a professional footballer following the draw against Forest, walking out of the ground with nothing grander than a polite cheerio.
He was only 23 years old and simply got on with the rest of his life.
“I just want the chance to forget about football,” was as much as the reporters got out of him on the Monday following his retirement from the game.
The Express wrote: “Knowles, given an emotional farewell by the Molineux crowd after Saturday’s home draw with Nottingham Forest, rose late yesterday, and then he immediately got down to reading his Watchtower.” The tabloid added that Peter had later attended a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses with his “pretty wife” called Jean.
In that same week, Chelsea’s Bobby Tambling gave a series of interviews hinting he could soon follow Knowles’ lead, sending the press into meltdown.
“Soccer Witness No.2 may quit!” was the Daily Mirror’s headline. Ultimately, though, Tambling continued with his sporting career and posted a Chelsea goalscoring record that stood for 47 years (eventually surpassed by Frank Lampard in May 2013).
Wolves fans can only speculate about how many more goals Knowles could have added to his final league total of 61 in 174 games, but the man himself has never expressed regrets regarding his decision. He wore the Wolves jersey just once more, during Kenny Hibbert’s 1982 testimonial, before calling it quits. In 1991, he was the inspiration for Billy Bragg’s God’s Footballer.
For a time he stacked shelves in Marks and Spencer, but kept in touch with his former team-mates and even visited Munro in hospital after he had a stroke.
“For me, the essence of this story has got nothing to do with football,” states Lalley. “For the last 40 years, Peter has been completely vindicated, because when he quit football, the stock opinion seemed to be that he would be back at Wolves in no time at all.
“Peter was considered to be flaky and immature, and he never got the credit he deserved for knowing his own mind. I would say there isn’t a more contented man around Wolverhampton than Peter Knowles at the moment.”