“Three goals. Black Country derby. At West Brom. Five thousand of our fans. I absolutely lost my head!” Thirty years since Iwan Roberts’ demolition of the Albion.

Thirty years on, the events of 15 September 1996 are recalled as fondly as ever by the man who had a relatively fleeting Molineux career. Roberts arrived in that summer from Leicester City, where he had previously worked with manager Mark McGhee.

“I’d had a slow start and hadn’t scored in my first seven games but we’d got off to a good start as a team,” Roberts recalls. “Bully scored a hat-trick on the opening day away at Grimsby and then he got the winner in our first home game against Bradford.

“Wolves had paid £1.2million for me and I hadn’t scored, but the crowd wasn’t on my back or anything. We played at the Manor Ground on the Tuesday and I scored my first goal, when we drew 1-1 with Oxford, and then on the Sunday we went to The Hawthorns.

“And, do you know what, it felt as if I’d scored more goals against West Brom than any other team. I don’t know why that was, but I’d scored two for Leicester and two for Huddersfield against them.”

Wolves had been given a huge allocation of tickets for the televised game, which had caused anger amongst some of Albion’s supporters. The atmosphere had hit fever pitch before the players had even set foot on the pitch.

“I remember walking up the tunnel and looking out at the stand to the right and it was just gold and black,” Roberts continues. “There must have been five or six thousand fans in there, they had the whole stand. My first two goals were almost identical, they came from Steve Froggatt’s in-swinging corners. The first goal was only after a few minutes. Then not long after that Bully got his goal against them, which he always did, to make it 2-0. Then I got my second before half an hour had been played, and they pulled one back just before half-time.

“For the hat-trick, Stevie Froggatt made this incredible run down the left. I sprinted as quick as I could – which wasn’t very quick, you know what sort of player I was! – and he’s put this great ball across the six-yard box and I just timed my run to perfection.

“For that split second, when I saw the ball hit the back of net, I just lost my head. Three goals. Black Country derby. At West Brom. Five thousand fans. I absolutely lost my head. There’s a great photo of me celebrating in front of the fans and Bully is on my shoulders.”

The win put Wolves amongst the early promotion pacesetters. With a squad that had been expensively assembled by McGhee and still had many of Graham Taylor’s costly recruits on board, supporters were hopeful of automatic promotion. But Wolves won just one of their next nine home games before Christmas, losing six of them, and runaway leaders Bolton Wanderers were joined by Danny Wilson’s Barnsley in the top two at the end of the season.

“We should have gone up automatically, we had a good side, but we just couldn’t win at home,” Roberts admits. “The pressure and expectation got to us at home. We ended up in the play-offs and played Crystal Palace over two legs. We lost the first leg 3-1 when Dougie Freedman got two, then we took them back to Molineux. Mark Atkins scored early and the place erupted. They equalised and we went 2-1 up when Ady Williams scored with five minutes to go, but we just couldn’t get that final goal.”

Defeat proved to be the final straw for an increasingly frustrated owner, Sir Jack Hayward. “They think the Golden Tit – me – will go on forever”, he complained. And with that, the lavish spending of the past three seasons was over.

“The club was going to have to sell before they could buy,” Roberts adds. “They accepted a bid for me from Norwich City and that was the end. To be fair to him, he’d pumped a lot of money into the club. There were players there on big money for the division, ten or 15 grand a week.

“I was only there for 12 months and I never wanted to leave. It was the closest club to my parents and that was important for me because they travelled here, there and everywhere to support me. It was nice that they didn’t have that far to come and watch me play, and I had two years left on my contract.

“We’d bought a house and I’d only been in it four months, and then I was moving all the way to East Anglia. I felt I had more to give. Bully always played, you accepted that as you knew what a legend and goal machine he was. Me and Don Goodman used to compete to see who’d play up front with him, we’d rotate to partner Bully up front.

“It was a great dressing room with the likes of Geoff Thomas, Dean Richards - God bless him - Steve Froggatt, Neil Emblen, Thommo [Andy Thompson], Don, Simon Osborn and Stowelly [Mike Stowell] in goal too. It was a really good place to be.”

Roberts found himself lining up against Wolves on the opening day of the 1997-98 season at Carrow Road.

“I made my Norwich debut against Wolves and they had Robbie Keane making his debut up front. I had an absolute stinker and he scored two. He went on to play for Inter Milan, Liverpool and Celtic. I went on to play for Gillingham and Cambridge!”

In self-deprecation, Roberts is doing himself a disservice. Before his drop down the divisions he became a much-loved player for the Canaries, playing a central part in their promotion to the Premier League during the 2003-04 season. His spell at Wolves was brief in comparison but he left an indelible impression on the supporters.

“I’m the only Wolves player ever to score a hat-trick at the Hawthorns which is something else I’m really proud of,” he adds. “I only scored 12 league goals but a quarter of them came against the Baggies, because I scored in the home game as well. Even now, on the 15 September, I still get tweets from Wolves fans.”

And that famous hat-trick has come to the rescue in bizarre circumstances in recent years.

“My daughter lives in Kent and I go and see her quite often,” Roberts explains. “Once I forgot to play the Dartford Tunnel crossing on the M25. It used to be cash, but now it’s all online. I got a fine for £75, so I had to ring up and pay it.

“I tried to blag it with all these excuses, saying I was having problems online, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the fella on the other end of the phone said, ‘Can I take your name?’ and I said, ‘Iwan Roberts’ and he said, ‘What, the Iwan Roberts who used to play for Wolves?’ So I said, ‘Yes, why?’ He said, ‘I tell you what, I’m a massive Wolves fan and I’ll let you off the fine for those three goals you scored against The Baggies!’ I could not believe it.”