All square on Honved’s return
The last part of our look back at the famous floodlit friendlies sees the Mighty Magyars of Honved return to Molineux
13th December, 1962
Wolves 1 Honved 1 Friendly
Attendance: 13,914
THE final article in my series of Wolves floodlit friendlies against foreign opposition concludes with the return of Hungarian team Honved some eight years, almost to the date, since the first meeting at Molineux.
Over a period of nine years, between 1953 and 1962, Wolves staged 17 friendly games under the Molineux lights. These produced many high scoring and classic games that a generation of Wolves fans would talk about for many years to come.
The 1954 meeting of the two teams had produced a five-goal thriller with Wolves coming back from two goals down to win the game 3-2 in front of nearly 55,000 supporters packed into Molineux.
The 1962 re-match would not be played in front of a capacity Molineux crowd. Only 13,914 supporters were at the game and unlike the 1954 fixture, which was an all-ticket game, for the 1962 fixture you could pay-onthe-night.
Both teams were now not considered the elite of Europe football. Honved no longer had legendary players such as Ferenc Puskas and
Sandor Kocsis and Wolves had finished the previous season (1961/62) in 18th place in the First Division. Nonetheless, Honved were currently second in Hungary’s top division and would still prove to be strong opposition for Wolves.
Honved goalkeeper Lajos Faragó, as per the 1953, meeting produced some brilliant saves. Faragó stole the show putting on a man of the match performance to deny Wolves a host of goal scoring opportunities. Faragó’s highlight of the game was preventing Chris Crowe from scoring from a point-blank effort. He also twice saved from Alan Hinton, once with the aid of a goalpost. Terry Wharton was also denied as Faragó dived full length to keep his shot from going in and he punched a fierce free-kick by Ron Flowers over the crossbar.
The game was level at half-time at 0-0, a combination of fine saves and missed opportunities had frustrated the small Molineux crowd and their frustrations were further tested five minutes from full-time as George Nagy gave the visitors a surprise lead as he opened up the scoring with a well taken goal, following Imre Komora’s chipped ball to Nagy. It was local lad Alan Hinton that saved