Mike Bailey: Captain and colossus of a player. Former star of the 1970s remembered

Six years ago, Mike, wife Barbara and children Victoria and Andrew made his dementia diagnosis public, in a bid to highlight the ongoing issues around the illness and support work being done in the sport to investigate the high number of ex-footballers suffering from dementia.

Bailey broke into the professional game with Charlton Athletic, after signing from non-league Gorleston in 1958. He was signed at Molineux by Ronnie Allen for £40,000 in March, 1966, and had already been capped twice by England despite not playing any higher than the Second Division.

He played in every league game except the final one of the 1966/67 season as Wolves returned to the top division, and was voted ‘Midland Footballer of the Year’.

He came at a time of transition and this was personified by the captain’s role. As the legendary Ron Flowers bowed out of the game, Bailey took over the captaincy just over a year after his arrival at the club.

It was a dressing room full of personalities, with Derek Dougan perhaps the largest one of all, mixed with younger up and coming stars like John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt, Geoff Palmer and Steve Daley.

“As a captain, he followed in the mould of Ron, Billy Wright and Bill Slater,” former team-mate Richards said. “Wolves had that period of 20 years or so where they had such outstanding captains, and Mike was up there at that level. He gave me, just as he did with all the young players coming into the team, so much help and guidance in training and matches on and off the pitch.”

Under Bill McGarry, Bailey thrived as the rock in midfield. He was desperately disappointed to miss out on a place in the UEFA Cup final through injury, only appearing as a second half substitute in the second leg.

But two years later he made up for that with a brilliant performance at Wembley as Wolves won their first major trophy in 14 years. His former team-mates would sometimes describe him as a Jekyll & Hyde figure.

“On the pitch he was a great captain, a winner, he was tenacious and he was loud,” Terry Wharton once recalled. “He got people moving and he got people going and you just knew he was a captain. And then off the pitch? He could have been a vicar. Such a lovely man.”

After leaving Wolves in 1977, Bailey joined the exodus of many veteran stars of English football and played in the North American Soccer League with Minnesota Kicks. He later moved into management, as player-manager with Hereford United, then manager of Charlton and Brighton & Hove Albion. He came close to taking charge at Wolves in 1984 but was overlooked for Tommy Docherty. His association with the club was resurrected in the early part of the Millennium when he did some scouting work for manager Dave Jones.

Bailey was inducted into Wolves’ Hall of Fame in 2010. In later years he was unable to meet up with his former team-mates owing to the onset of his dementia, and his passing in the same month as his former team-mate Phil Parkes has deeply saddened his team-mates and the wider Wolves family.