Peter Knowles was never forgotten

Wolves columnist John Lalley recalls, 42 years to the day, the moment when one of the club's greatest-ever talents walked away from the game, never to return.

I don't suppose he has the faintest idea that Wolves have accumulated seven points from their opening three matches this season.

Despite nigh on 190 appearances for the club and 64 goals, Peter Knowles has had different priorities to occupy his thoughts over the last 42 years.

It was 6 September 1969 that saw his last game of professional football before, as he perceived it, the game fatally compromised his spiritual convictions.

Despite boss Bill McGarry insisting that the player's training kit be laid out the following Monday morning, Knowles was not for turning and left football for good, only regretting that he had taken up the game in the first place.

That 1969-70 season had seen Wolves make an even better start than they have achieved this time around. The first four matches all ended in victory with Knowles scoring in the first three of the games.

Eventually, the season fizzled out into anti-climax and a final placing of 13th was a considerable disappointment.

The only memorable feature that remained was the quite remarkable exit that Knowles had chosen to take, it was an absolute bombshell.

For the club and particularly for the supporters, it was a devastating blow, an incident quite unique in its process and for so many people, utterly inexplicable in its reasoning.

Even now, many older fans who so enjoyed his skills still speculate with an incredulous sense of bewilderment at the course of action Knowles decided upon.

As for Knowles himself, there does not appear to have ever been a flicker of doubt that he chose the right path, deeming it to be the wisest decision he has ever taken in his life.

Peter was a very welcome face at the funeral of his former colleague Frank Munro last month.

Frank had consistently maintained that had Knowles remained at Molineux, the outstanding side of the early seventies would have been immeasurably strengthened.

Munro believed that with Knowles, by then, in his prime years supplementing an already potent squad, Wolves would have had the potential to strive for a league championship.

All speculation of course but, certainly, not a fanciful notion either.

Knowles exchanged handshakes, bear-hugs and beaming smiles with many of his former playing colleagues who had gathered to pay their respects.

Clearly, they were delighted to see him and he was totally relaxed in their company.

Regardless of what anyone makes of his decision, Knowles is an individual who radiates an aura of supreme inward contentment.

He is calm and placid and, apparently, completely at ease with himself and, for this, he is to be admired. For decades now, too many people have ventured their opinions on so personal a decision.

Much of the criticism has been unequivocal, a strident belief that Knowles had been indoctrinated without the maturity to follow his own personal instincts.

This kind of intrusive judgement was mainly based on the flimsiest of subjective speculations and must have continued to rile Knowles over the years.

The suggestion that he really did not know his own mind, when all the proceeding evidence demonstrably proves that his conviction is unshakable, cannot be argued.

Knowles was then and he is now, very much his own man and deserving of respect for his personal conviction.

This week, I listened again to the recording of a radio interview he gave a few years ago.

It was revealed that after his final game, not a single Wolves' colleague wished him good luck on his departure believing that his imminent return to football was inevitable.

Back then, Knowles was clearly finding it hard to be taken seriously. He recalled a game at Molineux when he ventured close to the touchline and saw and heard adulation screamed in his direction from the Wolves fans.

He said: "I thought to myself, this isn't right, I'm just an ordinary person."

It reminded me of the peerless Welsh rugby hero Barry John recounting the tale of his return home after his brilliant British Lions tour in 1971.

In a vast crowd of welcoming onlookers, a woman apparently sank to her knees and paid royal homage worshipping at the feet of 'King John.'

The man himself was embarrassed and, like Knowles, he found this idolatry completely inappropriate. Similarly like Knowles, John decided that he too would quit his brand of football sooner rather than later.

Knowles expressed fulsome regret for what he described as his "bad attitude towards people" when he was a footballer.

He cringed at the memory and expressed the view that leaving the game was 'the best decision I ever made in my life.'

He readily admitted that he had enjoyed all of the peripheral perks associated with being a high profile player and, even fort- plus years ago, the glare and the spotlight still surrounded the game.

Yet within weeks of turning his back on it all, Knowles found his first alternative employment working as a milkman. It remains an astonishing story.

With all the bitterness and acrimony flying about at Hampden Park last Saturday, with all the cries of skulduggery and cheating and expressed from the Scottish camp, I wonder what Peter might have made of it all.

At his worst, he was petulance personified, but he grew out of it and in his own very personal way, came out the winner.

Forty two years to the day since that amazing finale against Nottingham Forest, it beggars belief.

As the mourners mingled outside after the Munro farewell, a guy pointed towards the church foyer and said "there's the best player I have ever seen in a Wolves shirt."

Peter was out of earshot, a good job because he would no doubt have been embarrassed by such a compliment.