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Wanderers Ways. Neil Thompson 1961-2021

70's Terrace Wars


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Stood with a load of them, late 70s early 80s, on the embankment. One of them had worked a fiddle with one of his customers and ended up with a few miniature whisky bottles. He was handing them out to all who wanted them.

 

One of the empties flew through the air and hit a copper on the helmet. A load of OB came running up to the scoreboard area and started picking on those of us still supping our tots. A copper got hold of me and another lad (unknown) and said he was nicking us for throwing missiles. We protested that, if we'd thrown our bottles, why the fuck were they still in our hands? The copper gave a sigh of "What a thick twat I am!" and let us go before his mates saw what was going on.

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I don't think we played Bristol Rovers in Div One did we?

Played Bristol City in the very first game but can't remember many Bristol City fans actually being there. Remember them coming back from 1-0 down (Gowling screamer) to win 2-1 though.

 

You are probably right Paul, I was just generalising about Burnden, everybody wanted to have a go at Bolton, and they did, even Wiggin stormed the Wagon & Horses one year

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I don't think we played Bristol Rovers in Div One did we?

Played Bristol City in the very first game but can't remember many Bristol City fans actually being there. Remember them coming back from 1-0 down (Gowling screamer) to win 2-1 though.

 

I'm thinking of the Bristol City game which was the last game of the season and they had got promoted, they were everywhere, loads of fighting on the forecourt, we were involved [obviously] and a bloke on the roof of the ticket office shouted at us to fuck off as it was all being filmed, top man :good:

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Wolves made there way accross the pitch to the Lever End after the game, they were big on numbers and were "up for it" - but the first few dozen who manged to scale the fence into the Lever End took a right pasting iirc.

Anyone remember the Spurs cup game from the late 70's? it was a night game and we won in extra time. Spurs fans left the embankment early and covered EVERY exit from the Burnden terrace,the first few brave Bolton souls to leave got a kicking but hundreds and hundreds of angry exiting Wanderers fans saw what was happening, and the London boys got their comeuppance - big style.

 

 

The Spurs game was the second of a couple of big home games against them I recall? A big league game as well. We won one 2-1 with a John Ritson winner and the other 1-0 with a Greavo special. Think the latter may have been the league game.

 

Anyway, spot on about the night Cup game. Yids thought they were in the ascendancy hassling young uns and pensioners on their way out but got seriously smashed when the lads came down. I can honestly say that I don't ever remember seeing that much blood splattered around in a football brawl. Not the smartest strategy standing at the bottom of ramps.

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i remember one off them dressed in bakers outfit all in white running across the pitch among them and him getting pints off beer thrown over him from the paddock prob the same guy unless they had some outfit thing going on like millwalls f troop think remember seeing something were they went to games in surgical masks

 

 

No mate, that was 'The Treatment'. Have a good mate down here who was one of em. Funnily enough, away from football, the two mobs didn't get on. Local rivalries, Bermondsey v Peckham or summat.

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never went in the 70's, due to the fact i wasn't allowed because my old fellas mate used to run the Rose Hill in them days,and wouldnt let me go because of the trouble he saw, my dad and another mate used to do "unofficial security" for him on match days, not stood on the door or owt but free ale while in and "asking people to leave" when they got to excited. he said the worst he ever came into contact with was forest with Sheff utd a close second, he says the mouthiest in the pub but the easiest to get rid of were the scousers of both varieties, all mouth and skin and bones he reckoned. this was just in that pub, don't know how that relates to the terraces at the time, but still have vivid images of one day he came home, half cut, sitting on the kitchen chair drinking from a bottle of guinness and eating a lamb chop while my mam picked bits of glass and pool cue splinters from the back of his neck, apparently caused by some "dirty sly toothless Nottingham b?stard"

 

other than tv, that was my only experience of 70's violence

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Was that Ste from LA?

 

Little old Moi ???? how very dare you !!!! as I remember the handbag game was a night game, the lad tried to give it to George Best but he got well pissed off so he gave it to Rodney Marsh who still was holding it when the game kicked off, memory is a little fussy but wasn't that the game when Sir Bobby got sent off for the only time in his fantastic career, I remember him leading his whole team off to protest our very late equalizer.......my party piece was against Fulham but it was on Promotion day, I still get lots of compliments for my footy skills and nutmegging the chasing plod

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Little old Moi ???? how very dare you !!!! as I remember the handbag game was a night game, the lad tried to give it to George Best but he got well pissed off so he gave it to Rodney Marsh who still was holding it when the game kicked off, memory is a little fussy but wasn't that the game when Sir Bobby got sent off for the only time in his fantastic career, I remember him leading his whole team off to protest our very late equalizer.......my party piece was against Fulham but it was on Promotion day, I still get lots of compliments for my footy skills and nutmegging the chasing plod

 

 

I have a photo of thee and me somewhere Ste - a cutting from the Daily Express if I remember rightly. Can't remember the year but we were part of a pitch invasion and were patting Alan Gowling on the back after a 3-1 home win v. Wednesday which kept us up. I think he'd scored a couple.

 

Fecking hooligans.

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I'm thinking of the Bristol City game which was the last game of the season and they had got promoted, they were everywhere, loads of fighting on the forecourt, we were involved [obviously] and a bloke on the roof of the ticket office shouted at us to fuck off as it was all being filmed, top man :good:

 

Yeah, that was 89/90 - remember that day very well. We won 1-0, Scott Green's first goal for Bolton.

 

Back to the late 70s, I remember the second game against Bristol City in the two First Division seasons. No bother - but pretty incredible scenes. It was in around December, we'd only won one game and we were rock bottom. We were losing 0-1 and there'd been a drab atmosphere ... but for some reason the whole ground got in the mood in the Second Half. It was suddenly back to the promotion chasing days and Burnden was absolutely rocking. Penalty claim after penaly claim was turned down and then right in the very last minute we equalised and the whole place just exploded with joy.

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Remember when one season the decision was made to split the Lever End in half away fans in one half home fans in the other, who thought that was a good idea I do not know, games against Forest and West Brom were punctuated by fans leaving the ground heads covered in blood 2 of my mates got struck and ended up in hospital one with half a brick and the other with a slate roof tile, utter utter mayhem.

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as I remember the handbag game was a night game, the lad tried to give it to George Best but he got well pissed off so he gave it to Rodney Marsh who still was holding it when the game kicked off, memory is a little fussy but wasn't that the game when Sir Bobby got sent off for the only time in his fantastic career, I remember him leading his whole team off to protest our very late equalizer

 

We played them in both the league and the League Cup that season. I think the handbag game was the league game. We won 2-1 and George Best scored for them. The ground was full of Utd supporters who'd come to see 'Besty'. We had our biggest crowd of the season up to that point, double the previous home game. I remember Marsh saying that he'd attempted a citizen's arrest on the bloke who gave it to him!

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my party piece was against Fulham but it was on Promotion day, I still get lots of compliments for my footy skills and nutmegging the chasing plod

But the biggest cheer was when they let you back! :D

I seem to remember someone else then tried the same trick and was never seen again! (well obviously he was seen again, but not in Burnden that afternoon :roll: )

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Remember when one season the decision was made to split the Lever End in half away fans in one half home fans in the other, who thought that was a good idea I do not know, games against Forest and West Brom were punctuated by fans leaving the ground heads covered in blood 2 of my mates got struck and ended up in hospital one with half a brick and the other with a slate roof tile, utter utter mayhem.

Yes remember the Forest game well. Everything was flying at each other. I sudddenly noticed my mate at the side of me had gone quiet, I looked at him and he had a dart sticking out of his temple. Really wierd as he just stood there dazed and confused.

Was anyone on this forum on the coach some years ago which went to Millwalls Old Den and got smashed up by crow bar jack while we was on it! We were just pulling up to the ground when we passed a pub, and the Millwall lot come out and starting throwing anything at the coach they could lay there hands on. Next minute a van pulls up, the guy gets a crow bar out of the back and starts to smash the windows on the coach. It was fucking freezing on the way home as the coach was lacking in windows!

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Just before the seats in Lever End, there was a double fence. Always wondered why as it was Bolton fans both sides with the gates open.

 

One night match, November 5th, we played a night match against Forest and they were put in the St Peter's way side of the Lever End. From my vantage point in the Burnden paddock it was like I was stood at Bradshaw Cricket Club firework display!

 

Just because it was raining too.

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The Spurs game was the second of a couple of big home games against them I recall? A big league game as well. We won one 2-1 with a John Ritson winner and the other 1-0 with a Greavo special. Think the latter may have been the league game.

 

Anyway, spot on about the night Cup game. Yids thought they were in the ascendancy hassling young uns and pensioners on their way out but got seriously smashed when the lads came down. I can honestly say that I don't ever remember seeing that much blood splattered around in a football brawl. Not the smartest strategy standing at the bottom of ramps.

 

 

Was it not 1-1 in the cup and 1-0 in the league?

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They were installed for the beginning of the 79/80 season..... I think.

Aye - couldn't remember if it was the season before or not; but this is in my gallery and I think it's the Bristol game, first of the season in Div.1 (as was). And clearly the fences aren't there...so it would have to have been 79/80 they came up.

 

med_gallery_7_32_56992.jpg

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Yeah, that was 89/90 - remember that day very well. We won 1-0, Scott Green's first goal for Bolton.

 

Weirdly, I remember that game very clearly. I'd have only been 14 or so. I was in the Cattle Market with my dad, as usual, before the game and it kicked off in there too. There was a bar stool flying back and forth from the bar at the front to the bar at the back.

 

For some reason I also remember before the game one of their strikers, who'd scored a shit-load of goals that season, having a fitness test on the pitch just before kick-off. His name was Bob Taylor. :good:

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Thanks for the great memories!

 

One thing that's bugged me for ages was a sunny saturday late 80's in Southend where there were loads in the away open terrace behind the goal. Shed loads sat down through the first half then invaded the pitch at half time into the home end behind the other goal. That end emptied rapid.

 

To this day never found out who that lot were or why they were there?

 

Anyone?

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