Sad News Of Death Of Former Winger
Mike Kenning (left) and Mike Bailey…..team-mates at Charlton, then at Molineux.
Mike Kenning, the Brummie winger who played nearly 50 games for Wolves in the late 1960s, has died in South Africa.
The 84-year-old also served Shrewsbury and his boyhood heroes, Villa, but it’s in the southern hemisphere, where he moved and settled, that he became better known in later decades.
A Facebook announcement in the last 24 hours or so about his passing-away has prompted a huge response from friends and family members, which confirmed our view that this was a life very well lived.
And many of the messages of condolence came from players he had coached and managed in his follow-up career on the other side of the touchline.
Kenning spent just over a year at Molineux after moving here from Norwich in January, 1968, with a survival battle under-way in the club’s first season back in the top flight.
He scored in a defeat at Leicester on his debut but, more significantly, netted in home wins over Sunderland and Nottingham Forest as safety was achieved with four points to spare.
Scott Pritchard, one of the two fans whose remarkable online efforts we featured on here last week, informs us on his www.wolvescompletehistory.co.uk website that Mike’s goal in the 6-1 success over Forest was the 4,500th at Molineux in the Football League.
The Erdington-born former Villa fringe man, who included Nigel Sims, Peter McParland and George Graham among his team-mates or friends in the Second City, effectively took over at Wolves from the highly experienced Terry Wharton. John Farrington had a run in the no 7 role in between but Kenning emerged as the preferred replacement and remained a regular into the 1968-69 campaign.
He didn’t find Molineux life as fulfilling under Bill McGarry as it had been for him under Ronnie Allen, , though. Despite taking his overall goal tally for the club to six, including penalties at Chelsea and at home to Millwall in the League Cup, he became surplus to the new manager’s requirements.
That was probably a disappointment both to the recently signed Hugh Curran, who had also been a team-mate of his at Norwich, and skipper Mike Bailey, who had known him as a Charlton colleague and who presumably put a good word in with Allen for him.
A £20,000 fee – some £15,000 lower that Wolves had paid – took Kenning back to The Valley and it was a sign of his maturity and switch to a central midfield role that he acquired some of the captaincy experience that helped his later career.
In taking his total appearance tally for The Addicks towards 250, with a goal return of more than 50, he paved the way for one final Football League move – to Watford – before dropping into non-League with Atherstone.
An image taken from the numerous Facebook tributes.
Like many English players in the early 1970s, Kenning was then tempted by a move to South Africa and joined Port Elizabeth City, whose chairman was the Springbok cricket great, Graeme Pollock.
He was subsequently offered the player-manager job at Germiston Callies near Johannesburg, thus extending by several years his involvement in the game before seeking employment outside it.
Almost a decade ago, we set Charles Bamforth what we considered to be the highly improbable task of tracking Mike down ‘somewhere in South Africa’. He succeeded, as he always does, and penned the A Catch-Up With Kenning – Wolves Heroes article that remains near the top of the various search engines.
He joins us in sending deepest condolences to the Kenning family and the friends who are feeling this loss most acutely.