Wolves fan needs help with his 300-strong shirt collection
A die-hard Wolves fan has set about documenting the history of the club's iconic shirts from 1877 to the present day.
Steve Plant started collecting Wolves shirts to show his father after the latter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given just months to live by doctors.
Seven years later he owns more than 300 shirts – including those worn by club legends such as Steve Bull, Andy Thompson and Andy Mutch.
The collection is so large he needed to have the loft of his Wordsley home reinforced after cracks appeared because of their weight.
He has now set about photographing a total of 106 shirts – including some from the club's museum – to feature in his book They Wore The Shirt, due for release in October this year. A limited edition of 2,000 copies will be published with the intention for it to be a high quality, picture-led book to sit on coffee tables across Wolverhampton.
Steve, aged 54, said: "This is something that has never been done before. This will be a picture-led history of the Wolves shirt from the club's founding in 1877.
"The old gold and black is an iconic sports shirt. Everyone knows it around the entire world and this will celebrate that."
Steve recently did a survey on Twitter and found the most iconic shirt in the club's history was the 1977-79 home kit.
And among his collection Steve can boast the shirt worn by centre forward Roy Swinbourne in the famous victory over Budapest Honved FC in 1954. His favourite, however, was the first shirt he bought belonging to fans' favourite George Elokobi to show his late father, John, back in 2009. He said: "I was approaching everyone who had got a shirt and paying them anything.
"It turned out he lived three years longer than the doctors said he would."
All profits from the book will be given to Birmingham Children's Cancer Unit.
Steve is still looking for a few shirts to complete those to be featured in the book.
These include any home shirt between 1925 and 1931; the 1970-74 home shirt; any white away shirt pre-1990; and a player-worn 1998 'wolfhead' Puma change shirt, which was coloured green and blue.
Email wolvesandengland@hotmail.com or call 07973 891390 to help out.
