Wondering about Bolton?

This has to be the weirdest football match I’ve ever been too and I’m still scratching my head as to what I went through. The experience from start to finish was both sublime and ridiculous.

I have to admit to a lack of planning on my part as I only chose what weekend game to go to midweek when it became clear that I wouldn’t be having any luck in the draw for tickets for Man City’s visit to Liverpool. In my disappointment at that realisation I decided to go to Bolton instead as it seemed an easy place to get too and I’ve been fascinated by the club since I was young. Their badge looked like something a child could draw, so I liked it instantly. Also, I found a Youtube vlogger called StuntPegg a couple of seasons back and the majority of her vlogs were from Bolton Wanderers so I wanted to go and see if the atmosphere conveyed in those excellent vlogs was present in real life.

I booked my train to arrive at Bolton for 1pm, figuring that would leave me more than enough time to find the ground, buy a ticket and watch the warmups before relaxing into the game. Except for one thing, Bolton’s ground isn’t in Bolton. It’s 2 hours walk or 30 mins cycle away, but luckily there is a 10 minute train ride that you can take to the tiny little train station of Horwich Parkway. Off the train the first thing that caught my eye was the backdrop of rolling hills topped in mist. A lovely countryside view, but not the place you expect to find a massive stadium of a club on the up.

The journey even to Bolton was crazy even before I realised that the stadium isn’t in Bolton. My journey took me through Wigan and having missed my earlier connection by minutes I suddenly had 40 minutes of free time in Wigan. It’s a lovely town and near the stations there is an exquisite octagonal war memorial in the grounds of an equally lovely church. If you have a chance to visit do.

Another reason to visit Wigan is Wallgate Station. The waiting room windows are covered in poems and the whole place is gorgeous. It’s on a line from Southport to Alderley edge and the route is one of the most scenic I have ever been on. The only downside to that route is that the train seats were extremely uncomfortable.

The stadium itself is set on the edge of a huge retail park that seemed to have attracted half the population of Greater Manchester that afternoon. The retail park does have an upside for supporters coming in by car, there is serious levels of parking available. I would be amazed in anyone coming to the ground can’t find a parking spot, even when the ground is full.

Even with the confusion over the location of the ground I still made it there with an hour to go till kick off, so I went to buy a ticket certain of a good seat in such a great stadium. The amount of supporters at the ground was impressive though and when I did get a ticket it said ‘impaired view’ and that confused me later. The lady who sold me the ticket didn’t ask for any details of who I was, which means there is no way for the club to know who comes to games and no way for them to prompt them to return to games in future.

Bolton are the only club that I’ve been too which don’t take details of the fans coming into their games and thus no way of building a supporter base. However, this doesn’t seem to effect the number of supporters coming to the ground. Three of the four stands were teaming with supporters when I got in there. The ground itself is impressive inside and out.

A word of warning though if you’re looking to pick up a programme though. In this digital age, with many places becoming card only, the programme sellers at Bolton are one of the few things that are still cash only. The nearest ATM is at Asda in the retail park should you turn up to the stadium cash light.

If you have time before kick-off I highly recommend taking a lap of the ground and taking in the statue of Nat Lofthouse on the approach to the ground for the station. There are four plaques surrounding the statue, two of which show scenes of Lofthouse’s career highs and one of which celebrates the significant moments in the club’s history.

However, the final plaque is the most important of the four as it commemorates those supporters who lost their lives at the Burnden Park disaster on 9th March 1946 when 33 supporters died during a sixth round FA-Cup match between Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers at Bolton’s Burnden Park stadium. This is not the place for me to go into the disaster, so I highly recommend you looking it up yourself if you wish to know more. It was great to see Bolton remembering those who passed though, they will never be forgotten.

The stadium staff are lovely, the stewards are helpful and kind, which I’ve found is a rare quality for stewards these days, and the staff at the food kiosks are some of the nicest I’ve ever met. They were fast and extremely polite. The wait for food was only a couple of minutes, which is nothing compared to most grounds, but the young lady who served me still apologised for the wait. The staff deserve huge credit for making my overall experience at the University of Bolton Stadium extremely enjoyable, they are also the most diverse group I have met at a football stadium. The one lad serving a whole stand at Preston was White whilst all but one of the servers at Brentford were Black. Bolton on the other hand had the staff at almost exactly 50/50 between those groups, with staff from Indian, Hispanic and East Asian backgrounds in the mix too.

Bolton fans are some of the most passionate I have ever met and the numbers that they travelled in to see their team in League one is brilliant. The official attendance numbers were 14,524 but in the ground it both looked and felt like way more. Many people talk about the Newcastle fans as the most loyal fans in the country, but from what I experienced Bolton fans could run them really close.

The Bolton fans covered themselves in further glory pre-match. During the tribute led by the stadium announcer to the late Roger Hunt MBE, a legend of the game and one of England’s world cup winners in 1966, the Bolton fans broke out into a spontaneous round of applause in his memory. It was an incredible show of class from the Bolton fans and I will remember that round of applause fondly for the rest of my life. Thank you Bolton fans!

The match itself was high quality and both sets of fans did a great job of trying to contribute to the atmosphere. Bolton were the better side throughout and some of the skills on show were brilliant. The standout moment of the match though had to be in the 32nd minute when Declan John pulled off an incredible backheel to go past an opponent on the touchline. It was something I’d never seen anyone pull off before and I certainly didn’t expect to see it in league one. The quality of the match was unlike anything I’ve seen before at this level in the leagues.

Bolton were on top the whole of the first half and they took a 2-0 lead early on that they didn’t look like surrendering the whole game. Sarcevic scored the first for Bolton in the 18th minute, cutting in from the Bolton left to slot the ball into the far top corner of the net, postage stamp stuff.

The second Bolton goal followed 5 minutes later and was almost a carbon copy of the first except that Afolayan, number 17, had to ride a few Shrewsbury tackles on his was to cutting inside and scoring in the far bottom postage stamp of the net. Two incredible and almost identical goals a mere five minutes apart and Bolton dominated the rest of the half to go in two goals to the good. The only Shrews player who came close to Bolton’s level in the first half was Bennett, Shrews number 17, who spent most of the half keeping his team in the conversation of the match. He also had a match long battle of the 17’s with Afolayan which was great to watch.

I had a great view of all this sublime Bolton play in the first half as, despite my tickets saying ‘impaired view’ the sightlines from every seat in the stadium are excellent, there are clear unobstructed views of the pitch from all round the stadium. Why my tickets said ‘Impaired view’ I have no idea and I’ll never find out either. Just another thing to wonder about with Bolton.

Their second have performance was confusing too, they were like a completely different team as Shrewsbury took control of the match and they almost drew level in the 56th minute from the penalty spot. The penalty itself looked soft and from my viewpoint any contact looked like it was outside the box, but the ref gave it so that’s that. Luckily for the Bolton faithful justice was served as the penalty was dreadful. After a long wait to take the penalty it was weakly chipped down the centre of the goal, the goalkeeper barely had to move to keep it out. If the pen had more power on it or the keeper had dived then maybe it would’ve had a chance of going in, but as it was it has to be one of the worst penalties I’ve ever seen at a game.

The visitors kept pressing though and, despite a scary moment in the 77th minute where they almost scored an own goal, they looked like they had a chance of getting back into the match. There chances were few and far between though as Santos, one of the Bolton centre backs, was having the game of his life blocking every pass through that the Shrews tried.

Shrewsbury did pull a goal back towards the end though, but the circumstances around the goal were controversial. It’s the 89th minute of the game and Shrewsbury are on the attack once again, but a pass through the Bolton backline was flagged for offside just as ball reached it’s intended target. I looked away to make some notes about the overall game and when I look up again seconds later the ref has overruled the offside and Shrews have a freekick on the edge of the box. I have no idea why. Shrewsbury scored with an incredible strike from the freekick, but I have no idea how they got that freekick to begin with.

That was the last action of the game, despite the five minutes added on which contained no moments of note and Bolton ran out 2-1 winners. They totally deserved the 3 points.

The strange placement of their stadium came into full focus. I was in the first small group of people to reach the station, but even so we had to wait outside the station as the platform was too small to have us wait on. Your stadium is incredible Bolton, but the station is not good enough for it. Expand the station please to make it fitting for your great club.

Also, please add some more big screens inside the stadium. As with Deepdale there was only one screen visible from the stands which was perfect for fans in the west stand behind the dugouts, but which was in the blind spot from my seat in the Nat Lofthouse (east) stand. It was an improvement on Preston’s though as it was ad-free and actually provides fans with useful info about the game, such as the score and how far through the game they are in a cumulative fashion. Preston’s screen reset between halves.

Another strange thing about this game was the position of the away fans in the stadium. Normally the away fans will be situated in a corner of the ground close to the home fans so that both sides can feed off the other and create one hell of an atmosphere, like the one I experienced last week at Brentford vs Liverpool. However, at Bolton the away fans were in the only stand not filled with home fans and they were almost centrally positioned in that stand. This left them as far away from the home fans as possible, which meant that despite the incredible efforts from both sets of supporters the atmosphere in the ground was flat as a pancake. Neither set of supporters lacked for passion or inventive charts, but the distance between them left no chance for them to feed off each other and give the ground that true football stadium feeling. The players tried their best to lift things with the greatest exhibition of skill that I have ever seen in a lower league game, but to no avail.

The stadium is incredible and the fans are inspiring, but the atmosphere was one of the worst I have ever experienced at a football match and I’ve been to non league games with a few hundred fans before. This juxtaposition of incredible stadium, inspiring fans and inspired football against such an awful lack of atmosphere has me wondering whether to go to another game some time and I’m just not sure.


There will be no blog next week as I take a week off for the international break to focus on other commitments on the Saturday. I had planned to got to a Women’s match on the Sunday, but they’re all down south and with Sunday public transport that’s further than I’m able to go for a day.
I’ll be back in 2 weeks when I’m back in London for the whole weekend and using will the opportunity to take in a London Derby.