Fine record in floodlit friendlies
Wolves from their first floodlit friendly defeat as he scored a tremendous strike to give the home side a deserved equaliser. The game finished 1-1.
Jozsef Bozik the Honved president announced postgame that he wanted the fixture to become an annual event and sure enough the clubs did meet a year later, this time in Budapest. The game played at the Népstadion (People’s Stadium) saw Wolves lose 2-1 in front of a crowd of nearly 31,000. Laszlo Tuschinger and Komora scoring for the home team and Ray Crawford getting a consolation goal for Wolves.
Wolves record over the 17 floodlit friendly games was an incredible, played 17, Won 13 and drew 4. Scoring an impressive 55 goals and only conceding 18, of which 5 of those games being conceded in the 5-5 draw against Dynamo Tblisi.
The floodlit friendlies played at Molineux, had seen the BBC give TV coverage to some of those games, at a time when live football on the TV did not go beyond the FA Cup final. The friendly games gave birth to the European Cup football competitions and then the subsequent Champions League.
The idea for my series arose after reading Clive Corbett’s and Steve Gordos’s excellent book Golden Glow that covers supporters favourite floodlit matches from 1953 to 2021. In writing and researching my articles for the Bugle, I have been assisted from Wolves against the World book by John Shipley, which is a great read. The book provides match details of Wolves European nights between 1953 to 1980. I’d also like to thank Peter Crump for providing some images of the earlier floodlit friendly programmes and Paul and Wendy Gibbons for their support.