Grandad
Remembering our own: Our Bolton supporting forebears
The Bolton Wanderers Remembrance Group has done some great work in recent times and it was sad to read about the passing of its founder Alan Mather.
Remembering our former fans and what they passed on to us seems more than ever to be an important thing to do. More often than not the people who introduced us to Bolton Wanderers were close relatives. In my case it was my Dad and uncles but both of my Grandads were also BWFC supporters and remembering what they said and thought about the club in their latter years/our early years provides a little window in to the way the town thought about the club in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
We lost one of my Grandads in 1984 and I was in my early teens at the time. He was only in his 60s when he died having been born in the 1920s. He worked in mills around Bolton and was a Special Constable for the police. His Lancastrian culinary delight was going to the chippy with a pudding basin and asking them to fill it with steak pudding, chips and peas before eating it with a gigantic cup of tea on the side. Ideally there'd be an egg custard to follow – as long as it wasn’t bought from a Hampson’s pie shop for whom he reserved withering comments. These were the days before public health advice! He also smoked like a chimney – Park Drive being his choice of ciggies. Holidays were in Blackpool or Cleveleys although in later years Scotland and Devon featured and there were even a couple of trips to the Channel Islands and Ireland. He also liked an occasional bet on the gee-gees – but they famously never won, and I do mean never. To this day we remember the names of some of the horses he backed and then cursed for days afterwards.
“His Lancastrian culinary delight was going to the chippy with a pudding basin and asking them to fill it with steak pudding, chips and peas.”
I’d never known him go to Burnden Park other than to watch his son/my uncle play in one of the Bolton Combination cup finals. However there are things I remember him saying about the club that have always stuck with me.
On the plus side (and no surprises here) he loved Nat Lofthouse and players like Malcolm Barrass, Dennis Stevens, Roy Hartle and Tommy Banks. One of his favourite lines was that if Tommy had played instead of his brother Ralph in the 1953 Cup Final we’d have won it. He had a great memory for individual games in the 50s and like many of his generation spoke with great fondness of the 1958 F.A. Cup quarter final win versus Wolves.
There were also fleeting references to war-time football from 1939-45. He himself was fortunate not to see military action until 1945/46 when he served in newly liberated France and Belgium guarding German prisoners of war. He was therefore able to attend many of these slightly bizarre games at Burnden. They were friendlies with “guests” turning out randomly for clubs and unusual results occurring. It must have made the COVID seasons of recent times seem like a walk in the park. He often spoke about Harry Goslin who was a great 1930s Bolton player killed in the war.
The downside with his recollections was the 1960s when it seems he became gradually became more and more disillusioned with the club and, especially, the board. One of his favourite lines was that Bolton won the cup with a £110 team (£10 signing on fee for each player) in 1958 and thought they were entitled to seek success ”on the cheap” for years afterwards. He’d often reference Burnley with their shrewd scouting in the North-East and in Scotland. The Clarets won the league in the early 60s at just the time we were struggling to stay in the top flight. This before then spending a long barren spell in the second tier – despite having attractive players like Franny Lee and Freddie Hill on our books.
By the time I’d become his first grandchild in the 1970s I get the impression he’d almost entirely given up on the club. He was certainly very bitter in his comments – betraying the mind of a man who’d been through that football supporting cycle we all know and love. That move through being obsessed in your teens and twenties before gradually becoming ever more cynical in later years.
“He became gradually became more and more disillusioned with the club and, especially, the board.”
The one game I know he attended was in the 1971/72 season, Jimmy Armfield's first at the club. My Dad/his new son-in-law, was with him and they sat in the Burnden Stand – it’s through my Dad that I know this. This was Bolton’s first ever season in the lower divisions. It was an infamous League Cup replay against Chelsea. We’d got an unlikely draw against them at Stamford Bridge in the round after a very remarkable 3-0 home win over Manchester City thanks to a Garry Jones hat-trick. The replay against the London side at Burnden ended in a 6-0 pummelling in front of 29,000. It can’t have done anything to lessen his negative thoughts towards the club.
The general scene at the time did nothing to draw him back. Hooliganism and crowd segregation were concepts with which his civilised and ordered mind could not cope and his take on the music of the day was that it was “bang, bang music”. Football had moved away from him and his generation and this was being reflected in attendances in the 1980s.
Such was his disinterest that he often wouldn’t know Saturday or midweek results until the Evening News dropped on his doormat or we brought him a copy of a Sunday paper.
He died in March 1984 but my last footballing memories of him came in the September 1983. Bolton had found themselves back in the third tier with John McGovern as manager but had won their first two games of ’83/84. My BWFC enthusiasm was bubbling. It must just about have still been the school holidays because I remember being at his house on a midweek Tuesday afternoon when the B.E.N. landed. For our third league game we had Gillingham away that night and I’d already declared victory. Clearly we were going to be far too good for the old Division Three. He bluntly told me we’d lose. The day after I was back up at his house in a much quieter mood on the football front. We’d lost 2-0 at Priestfield. Unusually he already knew the result. I can’t remember his exact words but they were along the lines that I’d learn all about Bolton Wanderers as I went through life.
“He bluntly told me we’d lose. The day after I was back up at his house in a much quieter mood on the football front. We’d lost.”
The postscript came the following Sunday. In these days we were taken to church by my mother on Sunday mornings. There’d always be a copy of the Sunday Mirror in her bag because afterwards we’d drop by at my Grandad’s so he could check his pools coupon. Just like his flutters on the horses, he never won. On this particular Sunday I bounded out of church and up the hill to knock on the door while clutching the newspaper. The score the previous day was a legendary one – Bolton 8 Walsall 1, Tony Caldwell (5). When he answered the door I didn’t let him get a word in. “Bolton won 8-1 yesterday”. He wouldn’t have it. Then I handed him the paper. The penny began to drop that I was probably telling the truth, so he put the paper down without looking at the results. I carried on with my “8-1” diatribe. He let me carry on for a couple of minutes and then cut me dead with: “who were they playing, the blind school?”. Me and my sister still got our tube of Rowntree’s Smarties each so I can’t have annoyed him that much. If he had lived to see April and May 1984 he’d have had a knowing look in his eye as the season fizzled out with a series of abysmal results. I hope he’s had more success on the horses during his visits to that great Ladbrokes in the sky.