Hectic Schedule Suiting Well-Travelled Goal Ace
No prizes for working out how much scoring for Wolves meant to him….
“If you want something doing, ask someone who’s busy.” In other words, ask somebody just like Mel Eves.
The exact origins of that well-known sentiment are not known but it might have been created for the Wolves-supporting former Molineux forward.
His 1970s and 1980s team-mates continue to raise eyebrows at his workload at an age which used to be seen as a time for ‘pipe, slippers and a diet of live TV football.’
This regular attendee of the player reunion lunches at The Fox, Shipley, was among the mourners at Gary Pierce’s funeral last month, when he was delighted to be sitting next to Steve Kindon in the church.
He has also been one of those rallying to support Phil Parkes in his hour of need, visiting him in hospital in Oswestry in recent weeks.
Mel remains a member of the Wolves FPA committee and is chairman of the organising committee of the Rotary-driven Wolverhampton Young Citizen of the Year awards – a competition for which he was delighted to report to us in a phone chat last night that there have been ‘many highly deserving nominations’ for 2025.
In addition, he still spends three days a week working with former offenders and, as usual, attended the Wolverhampton Rotary Club Best Foot Forward event at Aldersley Leisure Village the weekend before last.
Are you managing to keep up? Eves is. He fielded a phone call last week from local BBC to talk about the Diogo Jota tragedy and hopes to be back on WM in 2025-26 in his long-standing role as a match-day summariser.
He was still at the vast majority of Wolves home games in the second half of last season even when he wasn’t on the airwaves and under the headphones, more than once in the directors’ box in different capacities.
Mel Eves clutching a photo of himself scoring in Singapore for England B on a tour of the Far East and Australasia.
“Everyone loves a trier” was how Dean Edwards summarised the work of one of his predecessors in Wolves’ attack around the time of a 1980 League Cup winners’ reunion in 2013. He might equally have been talking about his friend’s long service in charge of the Wolves All Stars team.
Darlaston-born Mel Eves – scorer of 53 goals in 214 first-team games for the club he has supported since childhood – is now 68 and showing precious little sign of easing up.
No wonder his Facebook profile describes himself as ‘public figure’.
*Mick McCarthy’s long-time no 2, Terry Connor, has been appointed as Solihull Moors’ assistant first-team coach following his spells with the Grenada national team and Dagenham & Redbridge.