Member Article

Wolves book on target for £100,000 goal for Birmingham Children’s Hospital

The second and final book charting the history of Wolverhampton Wanderers through their iconic ‘Old Gold & Black’ shirts is set to net Birmingham Children’s Hospital a massive £100,000.

‘They Wore the Shirt Volume II’, which is written by lifelong fan Steve Plant, is the biggest book ever produced on the men from Molineux and covers the ups and down of one of the founding members of the English Football League.

The latest edition is 320-pages and weighs an impressive 2.5kg and this time features the takeover by Fosun and ends with the story behind Conor Coady’s shirt he wore when leading the team out to their first European competition in nearly 40 years.

More than 1000 copies have already been sold and the author is hoping the remaining books will be bought before Christmas, which will push the total raised through the publications and celebration dinners past the £100k mark – with all the money going to support children suffering from life threatening or limiting conditions.

“The last three years have been a fantastic time to follow Wolverhampton Wanderers and we wanted to capture our rise back to where we belong by producing a second volume of They Wore The Shirt,” explained Steve Plant, who embarked on his charity work in memory of his Dad.

“We’ve put together an extra 100 pages, including photos of the shirts and the stories behind them, covering our Championship-winning season, our FA Cup run and our successful qualification to the Europa League. There’s even a section in there on the ‘Poppy Shirts’.”

“The feedback has been fantastic with Robert Plant simply saying ‘wow’, Steve Bull remarking ‘it’s even better than the first book’ and Talksport commentator Adrian Durham reflecting on ‘an absolutely amazing piece of work, pure art’.”

He continued: “Most importantly, we’re raising even more money for the heroes that work at Birmingham Children’s Hospital so they can try to save even more lives. If we can get the final copies sold, we should be able to deliver a great Christmas present to the charity.”

2020 copies of ‘They Wore The Shirt Volume II’ have been printed and will be available to purchase online, at the Wolves Megastore and at a number of local organisations.

Nuno Santo, the current manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, was the first person to purchase the book and it has become essential reading for the players during the lead-up to matches.

160 shirts were found and photographed in total, with the oldest replica shirt featured being from 1908 and was discovered in a bric-a-brac shop in Alberta in Canada.

For further information, please visit £www.theyworetheshirt.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Russ Cockburn .