Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: Unforgettable? Not for hero Psycho Pat

Van Den Hauwe scored the goal that secured the title in a 1-0 win away at Norwich City. Filming a feature with him for today’s Soccer Saturday was great fun because it took me back to football’s formative years. Psycho Pat is one of the characters I grew up with, a household name from the time those earliest football memories were made.

What is it about the football watched in childhood that remains with you forever? It doesn’t matter which era or which team, there are a few short years in all our lives that leave an indelible mark.

Maybe it’s because the brain is still taking so much in and the young fan is such a keen student of the game. The stats and figures are so much more attractive and captivating to a young mind eager to learn rather than an older fan who has trodden the path many times.

Personally, if asked to name the Wolves players from the late 1980s they trip off the tongue without thinking. Kendall, Stoute, Bellamy, Thompson, Streete, Robertson, Venus, Vaughan, Holmes, Purdie, Cook, Downing, Dennison, Gallagher, Bull, Mutch and so on.

The squad from 2013? Hmm, not sure about that one. It’s the same for every other fan with their first team, whatever the era.

I bumped into former Wolves historian Graham Hughes at a match a few weeks’ back and the great man always loves recounting the times he headed off to Liverpool as a kid to watch their team of the late 1940s starring Billy Liddell.

Now well into his 80s, Graham will, without fail, rattle off the entire team in five seconds. Ask him to name last week’s starting XI at Anfield and you’ll be lucky to get two names out of him!

It’s not just the names and the numbers. The memory is stacked with images from those early times too. That’s the way it should be. It’s the reference point for all that follows. What is special to one fan isn’t necessarily as memorable to another but that doesn’t make one era more or less important than another.

Later that evening as part of our filming Van Den Hauwe and I wandered across from our interview at the Everton Heritage Society in St Luke’s Church on the corner of Goodison Park and entered the famous old ground to watch Everton’s under-23s play Liverpool in their final league match of the season and collect the Premier League 2 trophy.

There were 16,000 there and the majority were families. These kids were getting their earliest fix of football.

Van Den Hauwe still gets plenty of attention and adulation when he goes along to Goodison Park as a 50-something ex-footballer. He admits to finding it strange to deal with.

From his perspective that time three decades ago has passed and he no longer plays the game. But he misses the point. There are a generation of fans who not only saw him play but have him as the template for what a footballer is. Psycho Pat the Everton left-back.

I get far more enjoyment meeting and interviewing the names from my childhood than the biggest stars of today. It’s lovely to fill in the gaps and bring an era back to life. Chatting to Gallagher, Purdie, Holmes and co at Steve Bull’s 30th anniversary event at Molineux before Christmas was fantastic.

So let’s bring it forward. Last weekend’s Championship denouement may have brought a disappointing season to a sedate close for seasoned Wolves campaigners but there will be a generation who treasure it for their lifetime. And that’s the way it should be. The beauty of this great game is not always in the winning and losing but the creation of first time memories.

But one amusing aspect of these early snapshots is that they are very often clearer and more lasting to us who watched them take place from a distance than they are to the people who actually made them.

For the actors on the stage it was very often just a job and as fully-fledged adults far less memorable for them than the youngsters watching on in awe.

“Just don’t ask me about the actual football,” said Van Den Hauwe, just as we turned the microphones on to record the interview. “I can’t remember a ****ing thing.”