WANDERERS confront a once-bitter local rival for the first time in 14 years this weekend – the absence unlikely to have made the heart grow fonder.

For long spells in their distinguished histories, Preston North End and Bolton’s fortunes intertwined.

Two of the Football League’s founder members had already crossed swords 25 times by the turn of the last century and up to the mid-90s, the Burnden-Deepdale rivalry was as fierce as any other.

Never more was that the case than on May 28, 2001, when Sam Allardyce’s Whites faced David Moyes’s North End at the Millennium Stadium – the 140th and last meeting between the two Lancastrian clubs.

A resounding 3-0 win for Wanderers kicked-off the glorious Premier League era under Allardyce, paving the way for two European campaigns and a raft of international superstars like Youri Djorkaeff, Jay Jay Okocha and Fernando Hierro.

It was quite the opposite for Preston, whose reputation as bridesmaids in the play-offs continued unabated with a further three failed efforts at reaching the top flight before dropping out of the second tier altogether in 2011. But victory over Swindon Town – their first successful play-off campaign in 10 attempts – put to bed one of the most traumatic statistics in English football last summer and set up Saturday’s renewal of rivalries.

Having focussed their attentions on Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic for so long, and to a lesser extent Burnley and Blackpool, Wanderers fans are also looking forward to a new red rose clash.

Despite Wanderers’ precarious position in the league more than 2,500 fans are expected to make the trip on Halloween night, hoping for a result to lift the gloom.

The club’s current situation is a million miles away from the joyous stage in Cardiff back at the turn of the millennium but for those involved, the mere mention of a Bolton v Preston match is enough to conjure great memories.

Ricardo Gardner rates his goal – icing on the cake in the end – even higher than the one he scored in the UEFA Cup against Bayern Munich.

“It is my greatest moment, the goal in the play-off final,” he told The Bolton News. “It took us into the Premier League and we stayed there pretty long, playing our part. It gave us our chance to go and play in Europe.

“I remember walking out on the pitch. We’d lost a couple of play-off games before that but seeing that atmosphere, I was raring to go.

“Then there was the feeling at the final whistle, to know we’d finally got to where we wanted to play every year in the Championship.”

For the man who opened the scoring, Gareth Farrelly, it was a case of repaid debt. The ex-Ireland international’s goal for Everton three years earlier had sent Wanderers towards relegation, and karma was restored when he beat David Lucas from 20 yards to open the scoring.

“I used to tell the Bolton fans it didn’t do me much good,” said the former midfielder, now training in Liverpool to be a lawyer. “I barely played for Everton after that.”

Farrelly’s goal separated the two sides until the last minute when Michael Ricketts collected the midfielder’s pass, skipped around keeper David Lucas and rolled in a second to all-but book Wanderers’ place in the top flight.

Simon Charlton, part of a Whites defence that had kept 20 clean sheets that season, remembers the pre-match tension vividly, with every member of the side acutely aware of what failure to get promoted might mean.

“We knew what it meant to everyone, and how hard we had worked to get to the final,” he told The Bolton News. “Financially the club needed promotion and had we not gone up, you wonder what might have become of the place.

“I remember Gaz’s goal (Farrelly) and me jumping on him. I also remember Ricky’s (Gardner) goal at the end when we knew we were up and the players just went mental.

“When we were celebrating around the pitch and looking at what it meant to the fans, you just thought to yourself ‘it can’t really get any better than this’.

“That’s where my memories start to tail off. Sam made the coach driver pull over on the way out of Wembley, went into an off-licence and basically bought every single can of beer he had in the shop. The guy must have thought all his Christmases had come at once.

“After that, as you can probably imagine, the journey was a bit of a blur.”