“…the Bolton support had before the game tried to set fire to the police control box between the Manny Road North and the Embankment. They wanted to disable the CCTV cameras!”
Middlesbrough (H) 1987
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• Page Sponsored by: • TRANSPORT TRAINING ACADEMY • ttacademy.com
The history of White Love and a few of its predecessors
White Love fanzine started out life under a different guise back around early 1993. Dick Smiley takes you on a quick ride through the subsequent nine years.
The legendary Bolton fanzine Here We Go Again! had just decided to call it a day after 18 marvellous issues and left everyone else involved to go their separate ways. Within a few weeks, maybe months, Both Come On Feel The Wanderers and Tripe ‘n’ Trotters hit the streets.
COFTW lasted 7 issues, including its first A4-sized colour cover issue before deciding upon a name change. Step-up to the plate co-editor Ray Burke who threw “White Love” into the mix and before you knew it, the new fanzine was born.
Here We Go Again! (1991-94)
It was around the time of issues 6 or 7 that I got involved with Here We Go Again!, designing and sending in an article to the editor Howard for inclusion, fully good-to-go for the printers. Before you knew it, I was designing a few more pages for HWGA! before subsequently taking on the task of designing virtually all of it. Having a fanzine ‘designed’ wasn’t the norm back in those days, most were knocked together with typewriters, letraset, pritt-stick, scissors and photocopiers. To some degree, designing the fanzine took the fun out of the ‘old way’ of doing things, but in others, it moved it on. However, if you look back to the years before when Wanderers Worldwide and Now We Want Pele fanzines were about, they were pretty dire visually – just a stack of typewritten content baring down on you in the smallest of typefaces. Not the easiest of reads.
“Wanderers Worldwide and Now We Want Pele fanzines were about, they were pretty dire visually – just a stack of typewritten content baring down on you in the smallest of typefaces”
So with a now fully-designed HWGA! on the go, things should have been rosy and for a while they were. Sales were doing ok and there hadn’t been any lawsuits! But as time went on, Howard’s involvement grew gradually less and less, his desire wilting as print and design costs (yes, I didn’t do it for the love you know) starting to eat away at the paltry profits. Eventually he decided to call it quits after the Christmas “Annual” in 1992/93. RIP HWGA!
HWGA! Issue 18
I was only in it for the money!
So what next? Well dickhead here had just invested £2,500 plus in a new Apple Mac, scanner and printer. Yes they were dear as fuck back then also!! So I was left with little or no choice to crack on and set-up a new fanzine. Did I want to be an editor of a fanzine? No. Did I have to pay back a large chunk of borrowed money? Yes. So, as the sub-title above suggests, I was only in it for the money… at the start.
Did we mention that we have a book out?
Brought to you by White Love Publications. A 178-page book chronicling some of Bolton’s more memorable, more forgettable and more troublesome matches from the late 70s right up to the mid 90s. Stories that originally featured in the White Love fanzine over 20 years ago and have now been reworked and edited into this ‘must have’ book for all Wanderers fans who lived and breathed the Whites during that period.
EVERY BOOK SOLD raises £s for bwfcrg.co.uk
Come On Feel The Wanderers (1994-95)
Shit name, right? Me too. But at the time, Evan Dando and his merry men had cracked out a storming version of “Mrs Robinson” and The Lemonheads had got relatively big riding on the back of all the grunge stuff that was bubbling about and their huge album “Come On Feel The Lemonheads” was out in the shops and doing well. It seemed the right name to rip-off at that point, but this probably went over the heads of many Whites who had zero idea who the band were. Shit name!
“COFTW played their part in this historic 6/7 weeks by issuing a ‘Why don’t you come every week?’ advertorial in this issue – trying to inspire the Wembley fans back into the fold for home games.”
The fanzine rocked through 5 issues including a smaller pre-season issue during 1994/95 and then finally the one and only A4 issue (6) which had a colour photo of John McGinlay and David Seaman on the cover. However, with there now being competition in the form of Tripe ‘n’ Trotters, sales were being lost with each fanzine fighting to establish itself. Just as some momentum was starting to be gained and with the club doing well on the pitch – life, work, family got in the way – and a 6 month lay-off followed. Eventually COFTW returned in April 1995 to put out its final issue (7). It was only weeks after the Wembley defeat to Liverpool, Bolton’s first major final for 37 years, but just in time for the season run-in. COFTW played their part in this historic 6/7 weeks by issuing a ‘Why don’t you come every week?’ advertorial in this issue – trying to inspire the Wembley fans back into the fold for home games. The season finale saw the Whites win promotion to the Premier League for the first time via the play-offs and included that memorable trip down to the Twin Towers once again. With Reading easily despatched (yeah, right), Bolton were in the big time! What a time to be following the club.
White Love (1995-2002)
So with Bolton now a fully-fledged member of the Premier League, we just couldn’t call it quits. COFTW had been struggling but the new impetus of playing to higher crowds week-in, week-out and a wealth of opportunities for Bolton to pit their wits against the big guns of English football, meant we needed to pull our socks back up and deliver. The name was dropped and White Love was adopted after a chance comment. Firstly, ‘White’ to match our shirts and ‘Love’ because deep down we all love the club more than our own families!!!
The fanzine smashed out 7 issues in that first Premier League season. With some classic covers – including the much-loved Virgil Hicks “Great Escape” cover. Alas, we didn’t escape the drop.
“Firstly, ‘White’ to match our shirts and ‘Love’ because deep down we all love the club more than our own families!!!”
Next up was 1996/97 and a season that will always go down as one of the greatest in our history. Not only did Bolton trounce the first division, losing just four matches, scoring 100 goals and racking up 98 points, but it was the final farewell to our spiritual home – Burnden Park closing its doors for the very last time. That season saw a prolific 9 issues published PLUS an end of season review issue, which was produced in a totally different style to the typical fanzines but was a massive buzz to work on. Who doesn’t love regaling in 7-0 victories over Swindon, 6-1 victories over Spurs and a Championship winning night at Maine Road? Promoted back to the top flight at the first time of asking.
With a new life starting up at the freshly painted Reebok Stadium, seasons 1997/98 and 1998/99 were equally consistent in that we produced half a dozen issues per term. The team however weren’t so, getting relegated again from the top tier and then falling short in 1999 as Watford trumped us in the play-off final. Ouch.
1999-2002, things got a bit sketchy. The fanzines were sporadically released, it was harder to sell around the Reebok compared to Burnden Park and many other matters in life became more important. Whilst the fanzine had started out for me as a way to pull in some more money on the side, it grew and grew and became a way of life – 9 years of my life. Eventually I felt it was too intense with a young family and a highly demanding full-time job. Something had to give and I wanted my time back. So in 2002, with the Internet forums really cranking things up and news and views passing much faster than a printed fanzine could ever hope to transmit I unofficially called it quits.
1996/97 Season Review
White Love (2022)
As times have now changed and with a stack of 20+ year old back issues to get rid of, I thought it was time I got them listed online. That thought then progressed to producing the book and now the site itself.
In weeks and months to come, we’ll add to this page with more information about the past issues, how we created them and what each issue entailed. Plus the joy and grief we received.
Oh, and finally, a quick message to any white supremacists or internet daters, if you happen to have stumbled on here by accident looking for either of these services, sorry, we aren’t the KKK and our bits & butts aren’t for hire!
Cheers Dick Smiley
Stop just one moment…
Some of you probably don’t even know what a fanzine is, was, etc. Here’s me spouting off with my lengthy intro and you are none the wiser about what the fudging hell I’m talking about. Ok, I could harp on, but instead I’ve had a quick search and found this article. THE BEAUTIFUL ANARCHY OF FOOTBALLS FANZINE. (It’s an external link, so will take you out of the site, remember to come back). Take a read, it may start to shed some light on matters.
In Paul Hanley’s foreword in the book “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”, he summarised simply with the following quote:
“In the early 1990s fanzines gave supporters the chance to have their say on their club’s issues of the day, poke fun at rivals and also reminisce on the good, bad and ugly of following their team up and down the land over previous years.”
