Barker was the backbone in a golden era
FORMER manager Richie Barker passed away on 11 October at 80 years of age and his contribution to a short but successful period in the history of Wolverhampton Wanderers is assured.
In 1967 Barker was signed by Brian Clough and Peter Taylor for Derby County from Burton Albion. Aged 28 then he had spent 13 years in non-league football, scoring 157 goals. Barker then stayed at Derby for around two years, scoring 12 times in 38 league appearances.
Coach
He ultimately moved on Notts County and completed his playing career with Peterborough United. But it is for his three years at Molineux that Richie is known best in these parts. He began his coaching career at Shrewsbury Town alongside Alan Durban, and when the latter left to manage Stoke City he had nine months in charge at the Third Division club. When Sammy Chung was sacked as Wolves’ boss Richie Barker arrived at Molineux on Monday 20th November, as assistant to John Barnwell.
Chairman Harry Marshall welcomed the Barnwell-barker partnership as the start of a brave new world for Wolves: “We are entering a new era at Molineux. Events since the beginning of this season have been traumatic, but we believe we have now prescribed the right remedies and we look forward to improved results on the field.
Ideas
“I am confident that in John and Richie we have the right men for the job. They are dedicated to the game and they have refreshing ideas on team structure and playing methods.”
After Barnwell had suffered horrific injuries in a car crash on 23 April Richie Barker was instrumental in seeing the 197879 season through to a successful conclusion and was key in luring Emlyn Hughes to Wolves that summer.
Barnwell recognised this: “In my absence, Richie Barker has done a tremendous job for the club and me.” The facts of the pair’s less than three years together at Wolves are well-known – two FA Cup semi-final defeats (1979 and 1981), and sixthplace in Division 1 and a League Cup win over Nottingham Forest in 1980.
But I would like to dwell on the views of former players on Richie’s contribution to this period of fleeting success. They saw that although Barnwell was the figurehead, Barker got the team organised.
Willie Carr: “We played a lot of practice matches, getting used to the way they wanted us to play. Richie’s biggest thing was to close the ball down straight away. Soon as the opposition got it, go in. It didn’t matter if you sold yourself because if you did that, the next one was coming in so it didn’t give people time on the ball. That was the set up and it worked for us, suited us as a team and we had two or three really good years.”
John Richards: “In some ways Barnwell and Barker had a very similar relationship to that which Bill Mcgarry had with Sammy Chung, only the other way round. John was the more relaxed and easy going, it was Richie who was more of the taskmaster.”
Mel Eves: “Richie got the team organised, playing in a certain way. Training was very organised, even regimented, since they were pretty dogmatic in the way they wanted things so that everybody knew what their roles were, which I think was excellent.
“Richie tended to do the training and the set-up of the team. I think we played exactly the same way as Derby. We were pretty similar to the way Cloughie set his teams up, 4-4-2, everybody knew what they were doing.”
Geoff Palmer: “John Barnwell was the nice guy and Richie Barker told you what he thought of
you. They bounced off each other, but were very knowledgeable. Barny tried to give you a little bit of confidence and belief in yourself. We just went out and played with the belief that we could win.
“Barker got us playing a way that he knew would get the best out of us. We played to a system and for two to three years it served us well. To me John Barnwell was just the front man, you hardly saw him in training and Richie
Barker did all the coaching.
“Richie Barker was the backbone, the person we saw most of, actively coaching us. It wasn’t up and down the South Bank any more, but we trained well and hard. I do remember that he was fixated with getting the team shape right, defending all the way through. His tactics were very good.”
John Mcalle: “I can’t remember John Barnwell coming in or giving his main speech, but I can remember Richie Barker. He came in after a week or so and said, ‘We’re in this position because of nobody else but you. It’s your fault, the players alone. You got Sammy Chung the sack because you didn’t do it.’ “We were a big part of it but there was a management team as well and you couldn’t put the blame on just one side. I thought, he’s started off well! He was actually quite a good coach though, he got the team to play in a way in which we wouldn’t lose many and would win quite a few.”
Kenny Hibbitt: “Richie had a lot of good ideas and together with John Barnwell helped deliver a lot of success to Wolves.
He was a likeable bloke, very good on the training ground. He had his beliefs over how things should be done and was always ready to get those across.”
Geoff Palmer again: “John Barnwell was relaxed, he could keep a group of fifty blokes amused for two, three, four hours. Richie Barker knew more about the business of how he wanted us to play. He got us fit, he would give us a b****cking. We just got on well together and he got us playing a system that just clicked.”
Successful
There is no denying Barker’s role in one of Wolves’ most successful periods in the last fifty years, as Eddie Griffiths summed up in the Express & Star ahead of the 198081 season:
“TEAMWORK – that’s how John Barnwell and Richie Barker brought Saturday night fever to Wolverhampton. In hindsight the signing of Barnwell and Barker must rank as the finest decision the directors have made since their predecessors appointed Stanley Cullis in 1948.”
Sadly, it all fell away too quickly as Richie left to manage Stoke City in the summer of 1981, following former colleague Alan Durban, who moved to Sunderland.
This clearly saddened
John Barnwell who commented: “It was inevitable that he should want to manage a club on his own and I promised him that when an offer came I would not stand in his way.”
Willie Carr explains that Barker went to become his own man: “Richie wanted to try and play in a different way as well, a lot of the time it had been just up the channels, he wanted to play more of a footballing game.”
Barker returned with his new team on 28 November and left on the wrong end of a 2-0 score line, but Dot and Margaret in the Development Office welcomed him back with a birthday cake iced in the colours of his new team. Barnwell only lasted until the following January as Wolves began to fall apart under increasingly severe financial conditions.
Contribution
Richie Barker came back to take two Wolves players to the Victoria Ground, all-time record appearance-maker Derek Parkin in March 1982, and George Berry at the start of the next season.
Richie’s contribution to the Wolves of the early 1980s will never be forgotten and I was pleased to have met him at a former players’ dinner – and have him autograph my book.