By Chris Wright
Steve Bull scored a club record 306 goals (including 18 hat-tricks) over the course of his legendary 13-year stint at Wolverhampton Wanderers, though he only ever made one full appearance in the English top flight and that came for West Brom as a 19-year-old in 1986 – the season before he moved to Molineux.
Despite the flash-flood of goals ( he even broke the 50-goal-a-season barrier twice in succession in 1987/88 and 1988/89) the fact that Bull was banging ’em underneath the First Division worked against him from an international standpoint, with the ridiculously prolific Wolves frontman acquiring just 13 full England caps, scoring four goals in the process.
Exactly 50% of his international goal haul came in a friendly against Czechoslovakia at Wembley on 25th April, 1990, with a 25-year-old Bull sticking two away in a 4-2 win for England.
With England going behind after 11 minutes to Tomas Skuhravy’s glancing header, it was Bull that levelled just seven minutes later with an absolute pearler after being played in by a magnificent bending, outside-of-the-boot through-ball from Paul Gascoigne, who was at his mercurial best on the night…
What a ball. What a finish.
Incidentally, this was the game that saw Gazza pretty much play his way into the Italia ’90 squad – it’s not difficult to see why.