“THE reason Bobby Robson took me was as a wildcard, a joker, because no other team knew who Steve Bull was because I wasn’t in Division One.” 

30 years ago today, a striker who never scored a top-flight goal scored twice for England at Wembley Stadium. It was a performance which earned him a place in Robson’s Italia ’90 squad and a World Cup medal as England finished fourth.

Three seasons earlier, Bull was sold by West Bromwich Albion to local rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers, a club who had fallen on hard times, recently relegated to the fourth tier of English football for the first time in their proud history. 

Bull plundered a staggering half-century of goals in two consecutive seasons, fuelling successive promotions and bringing the “Tipton Terror” to national prominence.

With Gary Lineker going through an unprecedented international goal drought, a growing tide of opinion felt Bull should be let loose at international level.

“It’s going to be unheard of now,” he says. “You’re not going to get players out of the Championship playing for England. If you are, you’ve got to be very special. At the time, I was very raw, very immature. 

“I didn’t think about playing for England, all I wanted to do was play football and score goals and it got me recognised by Bobby Robson.” 

In 1989, Bull was called up for an end-of-season Rous Cup match with Scotland. Replacing John Fashanu, Bull muscled past Dave McPherson to score on his debut. He became the first third-tier player to find the net for England since Peter Taylor in 1976.

With the World Cup in Italy a year away and Wolves now going for promotion to the top-flight, Bull felt he could retain his place. “Once you’ve got your foot in the door with England, you’ve got a chance. I was banging goals in for fun for my club, that’s the only reason I got into the England side. Bobby Robson accepted I was a lower-league player but I could score goals. He said if you can score goals down there, you can score goals anywhere and he was proved to be right.”

The next season, Bull continued to score freely at club level but failed to hit the net in his next two international auditions.

With Lineker now back in England, scoring for club and country at Tottenham Hotspur, and First Division top-scorer Alan Smith starring for the England B side, Bull feared that playing outside the top-flight might cost him a place in Robson’s World Cup squad. 

“Me personally, I didn’t even think I was going at all. It was one of them things, I’m happy to play for England, if I get selected. I was a single-minded person. I think strikers should have the hunger and the desire to score goals. 

“That 18-yard box, I used to say to myself, that’s my box. If that ball comes in my box, I’m going to turn and shoot. That’s all I kept doing and doing and doing.”

Four weeks before Robson named his final squad, England faced Czechoslovakia on April 25. In the absence of first-team regulars Peter Beardsley, John Barnes and Chris Waddle, Robson handed starts to several players on the margins of his squad; Lee Dixon, Trevor Steven, Steve Hodge, Paul Gascoigne and Bull. After falling behind to Tomas Skuhravy’s early header, two of those fringe players combined to turn the match around.

Out of nothing, Gascoigne picked out Bull with an exquisite chipped pass. “It was unbelievable,” recalls the striker. “I was on the right-hand shoulder of the big defender. Gazza jinked himself through a couple of midfielders and with the outside of his boot, he just saw me. It came over the top, I chested it and I hit it about a yard and a half in the air. 

“I don’t know how the hell it went in but it went in, right in the top corner. I went: ‘Jeez, I just scored, oh man!” The striker instinctively ran towards the Wolves supporters in the corner of the old stadium. “I could see them in the gold and black and I’m going: ‘That’s for you boys’.”

Stuart Pearce gave England the lead from a Gascoigne corner before the Spurs midfielder made another for Bull early in the second half. “It was the magical maestro again on the right-hand side. He jinked in and out of two defenders. He looked up, he had a split-second to look-up, he knew I was towards the back-post area. 

“He dinked it over, pin-point pass, absolutely unbelievable. All I had to do was put a bit of power behind it and bang, hit the back of the net. The first one up to me after was Lineker. He was an absolute leader on the pitch. He took me under his wing and said do this, do that and it paid off.”

Gascoigne capped a virtuoso display by waltzing through to add a fourth. Over the course of 90 minutes, the two players had elevated themselves from the periphery of the squad into contention to make Robson’s starting 11 in Italy.

A famous image captures Gascoigne kissing a startled-looking Bull as they left the pitch. “I was on cloud nine. I was just thinking: ‘I’ve just scored two for England!’ I can’t believe it, I can’t believe what I’ve just done. To have Gascoigne on the same pitch as me, I had to pinch myself. ‘Gazza and me on the England pitch? This is unbelievable’. He was top drawer.”

Two weeks later, Bull was one of the players who appeared in the video for New Order’s No 1 World Cup song “World In Motion.”

“I’m from the Black County,” laughs Bull. “I can’t even talk, never mind sing! To get me on there doing a few lines at the end was absolutely unbelievable. It was a great experience. I just wish I could wind the clock back and take it all in a bit more.”

On May 21, Bull was selected in Robson’s 22-man World Cup squad ahead of Arsenal’s Alan Smith. “It didn’t even cross my mind at all being picked for the World Cup until you get the call … There you go, on the bottom of the pile, Steve Bull from Wolves.” He was the first outfield player from outside the top-flight to make an England World Cup squad since Terry Paine in 1966.

Bull featured in each of England’s first four games in Italy, yet his one World Cup start is not one he remembers fondly. “I think the game that I wished he hadn’t played me in was against Egypt because they played five at the back and it was hard to break them down. I never got any chances at all in that game.” 

Nevertheless, with England trailing in the semi-final and needing a goal the manager turned to his wildcard. “Bobby Robson actually said to me: ‘Go and get warmed up’. All of a sudden I’ve got my tracksuit top, zip undone, walking down the touchline, then Lineker scored and Robson stood there and put his arm by my chest and went: ‘Just sit down for five minutes’. We got extra-time, half an hour and I was just itching to go. ‘Give me five, 10 minutes’ to have a go out there but it never came about.”

England went out following the ensuing shoot-out but Bull still believes he could have helped the team get to the final. “I wouldn’t have fancied taking a penalty but I think to this day, I would have got at least half a chance in that half hour. I would have got myself one chance. I know I would have done.”

After the third-place play-off with Italy, both teams were presented with bronze medals, the last England’s men’s squad to make the podium at a World Cup. It sits pride of place in his hallway framed alongside his most valuable championship and player-of-the-season medals.

Despite starting the first two England games under new manager Graham Taylor, Bull never played for his country after 1990 so his two goals that April night were to prove his only at Wembley. “I think it was my best performance for England. I shouldn’t have been as naive as what I was when I was younger. 

“Looking back now, you want to look at these pictures, these shirts, look at the programmes. I never kept them. I just gave them all away to charity, to the family. I’ve got my memories in my head.”

Now 55, Wolves’ record goal scorer continues to serve the community he represented as a player.

“The Steve Bull Foundation has been going for 10 years this year, we raise money for local charities and organisations in the Black Country and the west Midlands. We do what we can, and have helped almost 50 charities so far. I’m also a vice-president and ambassador at Wolves which keeps me busy, along with public appearances and after-dinner talks.”

Earlier this month, Bull also felt compelled to support the ongoing campaign to provide hospitals with sufficient PPE by helping to organise the collection and delivery of 250 face shields to three local hospitals. 

“One of my oldest friends works at the hospital and she told me they are in desperate need, so I knew I had to try and do something to help.” 

After answering Bull’s personal appeal on Facebook, Telford-based 3D printing firm Ricoh are now producing 40,000 masks a week. “They need many more,” said Bull, “it will make a tremendous difference to the NHS staff on the frontline.”