1993 All Over Again
When a Roadrunner Christmas Compilation video cements your love for your club and then 30 years later history starts to repeat itself! Adam Ramsden reminisces.
Christmas Day 1993
A 10-year-old me getting spoilt rotten as my excited mum lavishes gift-after-gift at me after a year’s graft in ‘true-skint-northern-family-in-the-90s’ fashion. A brand new mountain bike and more games for my Super-Nintendo being the show-stealers. As the wrapping paper is collected my old man pipes up "ah I forgot this one" and pulls out what appears to be a wrapped up VHS tape. And there it was like the Holy Grail, “Bolton Wanderers’ Christmas Compilation” by Roadrunner Videos. The second half of the 1992/93 season and the first half of 1993/94. You can shove your mountain bike mum, this is going on. It was like giving a crack addict his latest fix.
So that was me for the foreseeable, a kid completely hooked on all things Bolton Wanderers, watching that video every single day from front to back. I could run through each game and know Dave Higson’s commentary off-by-heart to this day. Chuck Gerald Sinstadt’s at Anfield in there too, "Lee goes past Marsh, crosses well..." etched in to my 10-year-old brain.
“Chuck Gerald Sinstadt’s at Anfield in there too, "Lee goes past Marsh, crosses well..." etched in to my 10-year-old brain.”
What a time to be a Bolton fan that was, my dad hit absolute jackpot.
Before that 1993 season life was tough being the only Bolton fan in school. Grim days in the cold at Burnden Park kicking cans about at the front whilst Philliskirk and Reeves stuttered about with 4,000 in attendance was hardly a comparison to the new Premier League phenomenon the rest of my school were enjoying, albeit from their living rooms. There wasn’t much to shout out on a Monday morning. Life wasn’t so difficult after Bruce Rioch rocked in to town.
The journey we went on and the times I had with my dad was nothing short of dreamland and had me hooked. Scouring every newspaper, Teletext and old books for anything Bolton. Listening to radio commentary on GMR with Jack Dearden and Alan Fullalove. We had Ceefax and Teletext, the odd Bolton rumour on the Clubcall pages. That’s all we had, all I had to feed my habit.
Fast forward nearly 30 years later
My 11-year-old boy shouts me in his room to watch another Bolton video, probably for the 30th time this weekend alone. Is it a clip of his Bolton team on career mode on FIFA, or is it something by the clubs official YouTube account? No, this time it’s Bolton fan ‘Thogden’ with near million followers doing a video from a match we were at. Above his PC is his framed Jay Jay Okocha signed shirt and next to that last season’s shirt signed by his hero Dion Charles.
“Then along came Nottingham Forest at home. 6th May 2018 to be precise.”
Jesus Christ, I’ve created a monster, just the same way my dad created one in me.
Looking at my son now, and looking at the way our club is, it’s almost a carbon copy of the 1990s. Like then, we had been to hell and back, like then it was a struggle to keep my lad interested. Dour home games under Parkinson, apathy in the stands due to the regime in charge meant for an environment I didn’t want to be in never mind my boy.
Then along came Nottingham Forest at home. 6th May 2018 to be precise. For my lad, that was his ‘Hull away’ or ‘Preston at home’. It changed his life completely. He was bitten by the Bolton bug, just like I was back then, as bodies piled all around him and random blokes gave him hugs and threw him in the air.
No looking back now son. Obviously it wasn’t plain sailing after that but Bolton was now in his heart. And last season cemented it even further.
We’ve always enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond and last season was just the same as those heavy days in the early 90s. Big horrible away followings full of every notright the town has to offer. Morecambe was our Hull, Crewe was our Mansfield. Nothing captures the buzz for an 11-year-old boy like those kind of days. My lad bowling in to school on Monday morning speaking of pitch invasions, police escorts and last minute winners.
I’m adamant we are on the start of a very special journey, just like we were back then. As my dad always told me, Bolton Wanderers, always come back.
Aaron Wilbraham vs Forest 2018 – CLICK the image to watch that goal all over again!
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