THEY looked every inch a team who had been flown to Newcastle by a reserve goalkeeper piloting his first plane.

Not just any plane... one with an engine that cuts out at 10,000 feet.

Nervous doesn’t come close to describing these jitters.

Marcus Hahnemann didn’t fly them north at all, of course he didn’t.

That was an April Fool’s ruse dreamt up by the club on Friday and designed to catch ‘the green and cabbage looking’, as Mick McCarthy might say.

Wolves charterered a plane to the North-east. They won’t be doing it again in a hurry.

Perhaps it was because they missed the comforts of the three-and-a-half-hour coach journey? Plush leather interior, tables, a fridge, satellite TV and a toilet.

There won’t have been too many card hands shuffled around during the 60-minute trip.

Perhaps someone had replaced the Top Gear DVD and they had sat through Omen 2 or The Exorcist on the in-flight mini-screens?

Whatever the reason for this defensive shocker they certainly hit some turbulence.

Back in the melting pot went their Premier League future. Back in the mixer.

After four performances from Heaven this one was from Hell.

Hopefully for Wolves it was simply the bad day at the office that McCarthy alluded to.

Hopefully it will be back to normality against Everton.

Because this was the last thing Wolves needed, particularly on a weekend where the underdogs continued to snarl and bite the behinds of the big boys. Wolves started off fine. Adam Hammill teased and tantalised, but a route-one goal shattered confidence and they never recovered.