“We knew about the importance of winning the game,” Butterfield told Palace TV in 2019. “Selling Victor freed a place up front which I was never going to fill, but in a training session, a typical five-a-side, I played up front with Alan Lee, and Neil \[Warnock\] being Neil said: ‘We’ll go with that tomorrow’ – and we did!
“It was a little bit comical, but it was also a bit of a freebie for the squad and for me, thinking ‘What’s the worse that can happen?’ We’re on TV, the club get money, and we’ve got a chance of beating Wolves in a one-off game… that was the mentality going into it.”
Forty-five "terrible" minutes passed the impromptu striker by without anything of note happening and, in his own words, Butterfield feared he "would get dragged."
Then, "the second-half just seemed to click." In the 62nd minute, Butterfield would notch his first strike in the annals of Crystal Palace history.
With Wayne Hennessey in the Wolves goal denying a fine Matt Lawrence header, the ball sailed up invitingly for Butterfield, who hadn't scored in well over a year. Leaping in front Michael Mancienne, Butterfield headed home to hand Palace a lead worth over £330,000 in TV payments alone.
“That’s playing as a striker from Under-7s all the way through to Under-12s!” he laughed. “It must have been an instinct thing on the night… it was a great moment, but it was great for the club to think we had a chance of winning it.”