The Wolves promotion hero and the new life he has 'built' outside of football

But in the Wolves case, promotion helped pave the way for some of the longer-term successes which have followed. Paul Berry caught up with the former defender to chat about life during and after football.

When fans swarmed the pitch to celebrate Wolves’ promotion after victory against Crewe at Gresty Road, there was a picture of defender Scott Golbourne, a huge grin on his face in the midst of the joyous mob.

It was a triumph which followed the disaster 12 months earlier of a second successive relegation with the club in turmoil and, in the words of then chief executive Jez Moxey, needing to ‘lance the boil’.

It was also a moment when Golbourne, one of several brought in to help steady the ship under Head Coach Kenny Jackett, was able to fully appreciate and understand just what Wolves means to their devoted fanbase.

“I remember that moment and pitch invasion and just thinking, ‘wow’, because of seeing just how happy the fans were and what it meant to them,” he recalls.

“For me, we had done what we were all brought in to do, to win promotion from League One.

"The club should have been much higher than that position, they had achieved so much previously and have done since.

“But even though it was League One, it was still such a significant moment and something which people still stop me to talk about now.

“I know it is still regarded as a bit of a turning point, after such a difficult couple of years, and it feels like we were part of the regeneration of the club and the start of the ascendancy to high level football.

“And that moment, I could see and feel just how much it meant the world to people, and the impact of what we had achieved. Good times!”

Golbourne had been brought in the previous summer alongside others such as skipper Sam Ricketts and Kevin McDonald to join the experience and leadership of Carl Ikeme, Richard Stearman, Dave Edwards and Danny Batth in underpinning the Molineux revival. 

Coupled, of course, with the explosive firepower of Bakary Sako, and later Nouha Dicko, James Henry and Michael Jacobs, and a group of young and hungry hopefuls. 

And yet, the decision for Golbourne to join the ranks wasn’t necessarily a straightforward one. He had become a Championship regular at left back with Barnsley, and was faced with the dilemma of dropping down a division to a club which had suffered a painful decline over the previous two seasons.

“I had managed to cement myself as a Championship left back and other clubs in the same division had also shown interest, including Blackburn,” Golbourne reveals.

“When the call came from Wolves even my family were a bit confused because I had worked so hard to get up to Championship level – it was my dream to play in the Premier League and they found it difficult to understand why I would go one step the other way!]

“But I knew some of the lads at Wolves from playing against them, and I knew Stears (Richard Stearman) from England junior teams, and I could sense that there was this rebuild bubbling, which drew me to the club.

“I have always been someone who looks at the bigger picture, more of a longer term thinker, both in football and business, and to me, I felt like although I was going toLeague One it was going to give me a better chance of reaching the Premier League.

“I looked at Wolves and felt that over the following few years that was where they were heading, and I wanted to be a part of it.

“We so nearly did it as well!” 

They did indeed. Over the second half of the 2014/15 season, following League One promotion, they built up a strong head of steam and momentum that took them so tantalisingly close to the play-offs.

“It was a freak season, in terms of how many points it needed to reach the top six,” says Golbourne.

“If we’d have got there, I am convinced we would have won them.

“We were on such a good run and I was speaking to players from other teams who were frightened of what we could do with how aggressive we were from the back and the talent we had up front.

“But we’d had a really bad run around the November time when I think we lost five in a row, and for a team trying to challenge in the Championship, that is always going to set you back.

“We left ourselves too much to do, and although we did then click into gear, we just couldn’t get over the line.”