The usual fanzine intro would have covered off what had happened since the last issue – typically a month or six weeks. Well within the grasp of 2-3 pages of text. However, this time around there’s 20 bleeding years in between issues and I’ve not got the will power to drag myself into covering off all that has gone before. The Big Sam era all the way until the demise of the club under Ken Anderson’s stewardship, followed by our mini-revival under our excellent new owner Shazza with Ian Evatt at the helm. It’s been a big old period in the club and seen the highest of highs with European qualification (we never for once dreamt that would occur in the heady-days of the fanzine world) and relegation back to the basement for the first time since the dark ages of the late 80s (and we certainly didn’t fookin’ expect that again!).

For a while we had a fan base who knew only the glamour and glitz of top flight Premier League football. And then a subsequent fan base who have since only known the lows and even lowers of lower league football. All the while there’s been a vast amount of us who’ve been up, down, up, down on countless occasions and are hoping to rise again.

“Of course during all of this, the social media pages and online forums have been in a frenzy. Life as a Bolton fan is rarely without event.”

How would a fanzine have viewed all of the last 20 years – well who knows. They appeared to die a very rapid death once the internet started to kick-in. Not just the fanzines, look at newspapers, magazines and even for a while books – suffering at the hands of the digital revolution.

So how have we got to here – with White Love back online?

As was touched on in the prologue for the Good, the Bad, the Ugly book (I’ll come to that later) thoughts kicked in on how to get rid of all the old fanzines stashed away in my cellar. How I would go about this was up for debate. The likes of Gumtree, EBay, Facebook Marketplace all came into the reckoning – but somewhere deep down I dreamt that a full-on White Love renaissance with website selling them on would be the better option. I then progressed the idea and considered knocking out a freshly printed issue. Mulling over this and weighing up how much of the existing content was too good to be discarded, the genius masterplan came into my head to compile all of the Goods, Bads and Uglies into a book. For those totally unaware of these stories – they formed a regular series throughout the entirety of the White Love fanzine’s existence and were usually very well thought of and respected. As the momentum started to kick-in, I realised the book and the website would need to happen hand-in-hand.

“Like a Walker-McGinlay striker partnership being let loose to cause utter mayhem with a Division Three back four… the book and the website are now here in all their high-definition glory.”

Making no promises!

The plan now is to upload bits and bobs of the original content from both White Love and Come On Feel The Wanderers, its predecessor. Only stuff that we think would make timeless reading (The Dark Ages series for example), and of course, ticks the current new wave of political correctness.

In addition, we’d love to get lots of new content up, and once you start to explore the site you’ll discover there’s some new ramblings and stories – thanks to Paul Hanley, we’ve 3 fresh G.B.U.’s to tackle, plus a few older ones that either didn’t make the cut for the book, or we’re trying to slip back in unnoticed!!

Not forgetting how we’d like the site to be a hub for stuff that is BWFC-related outside of the club and Evening News’ remits. Like links to other sites, forums, Facebook groups, charitable events, YouTube content, etc, etc.

It goes without saying that we’d welcome tons and tons of you to contribute and fire in some articles. But bare in mind the world we now live in and also copyright laws when it comes to imagery (never a problem back in the day, we just stole the lot!!).

That’s me done for now. Enjoy. Dick Smiley.

PS. Oh, didn’t want to forget to mention that we’ve initially gone out with FREE content throughout the site. At some point we may need to introduce a tiny subscription for access. But in the meantime, there’s a SUPPORT US button and we’d welcome anyone visiting the site and taking some kind of gratification from its delights to chip-in.

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

“A reet good ‘Lancashire Hot Pot’ was in store as those old rivals from Turf Moor came to Burnden for what should have been a closely contested derby match. As it turned out there was to be nothing close about it as Andy Walker ran amok.”

BURNLEY 1992

“Keystone cops’ football from the home side was helping the Quakers on their way. As BWFC sunk ever more deeply in to uncharted depths of lower divisions football it was an evening to wonder just when the club’s fortunes would reach rock bottom and begin to rise again.”

DARLINGTON 1985

“The whiff of battle impregnated the nostrils immediately I had got out of the car, and the walk down Manny Road was like an obstacle course, avoiding broken glass and clutches of ‘youths’ with eyes everywhere and furrowed brows. Leeds fans were everywhere, all of them intent on gratuitous violence.”

LEEDS 1978