Looking back at Wanderers' semi-final trip to Wembley five years on

WE made a big family day of this – my brother and I took five teenagers with only slight experience of big games and who had never visited Wembley before.

We rented a drive and decided to get the tube one stop to the ground. However, we got to the tube station and were so appalled at the price we decided to walk. Little did we appreciate how far it was from the tube to the ground.

Suffice to say half an hour later teenage spirits had sagged and our very unhappy party were miles from the ground and flirting with missing the kick off. Then, like a mirage, a stretch limo appeared with a man wearing a Bolton shirt standing outside. He asked where we were going and expressed concern it was further than we thought. Then, unbelievably, he offered us a ride in the stretch limo. We then swept into Wembley – not in comfort but in glamour with the kids bristling with excitement. Was this an omen for the day? Obviously not. Still, thanks to that limo driver for the thrill, shame the team couldn't match that.

Chris Page

I WENT down to watch the match and afterwards headed into South London to drown my sorrows with a few friends.

I was sitting in the pub with them after a couple of pints and was fiddling with my Help for Heroes wristband and had been thinking something along the lines of 'it just doesn't get any worse than this', when the band in question snapped and pinged across, hitting the biggest, roughest-looking skinhead lad in the pub right on the ear (think extra off the film Green Street).

I pretty much sat open-mouthed thinking 'well, apparently this day can get worse' as he turned around with a face like thunder, but then clocked my expression and more importantly my Bolton top, laughed and said something like 'not your day mate, is it?’ I had hoped to banish that day for ever from my memory, but hey ho.

Matt Porter

I ASKED for a fair number of tickets on the halfway line and got them – back row of the top tier, so it was like watching ants. Stoke fans, like those of Watford in '99, were really up for the game.

They were there in bigger numbers and their rendition of 'Delilah' was deafening. I can't even recall 'The Wanderer' being played, although it may just have got lost in the general noise. Owen Coyle went through his pre-match goalmouth inspection ritual and 25 minutes later and 3-0 down, some of our lot (who were still sucking for air after the climb to our lofty position) were on the way back down to the bar, never to return.

We drove away from Wembley through streets lined with hundreds of Stoke fans pinching their noses, indicating 'You stank the place out'! They were right. The talk on the way home was whether we could ever recover from this most horrendous of batterings and despite overcoming Arsenal in our next match, history is likely to point to this game as the starting point of our decline.

Phil Parker

IT'S my dad’s fault I follow this stupid team, so I was simply repaying a debt by seizing upon two tickets for the FA’s Club Wembley – three-course meal, entertainment, posh seats.

Work contacts provided four further tickets elsewhere for the females in my life: wife (only ever been to two Leeds games in the 1980s), daughters (one pre-season non-league game) and mother (never been to a match).

The new Wembley was certainly better than when Dad had driven me to the 1989 Sherpa Van Trophy final, and definitely different to the one he’d visited in 1958 as a teenager. But the meal sat heavily as the match progressed.

As the goals flew in – and two seats to my left, former Potters player and boss Chris Kamara visibly relaxed – my colleagues a few rows in front of me looked round with pity and fear. But after the initial half-hour of shock and awe, the match assumed an almost comical bizarreness, and by the end we were nearly chuckling.

As we explained to the womenfolk – who’d had their own fun surrounded by chummily jubilant Potters fans – we’ve seen Bolton in a lot worse trouble than this. After all, it’s not like we’re skint in the lower leagues, is it?

Gary Parkinson

IT was an emotional day for me as I travelled down with friends; the last time Bolton were in an FA Cup semi-final my grandad (Ralph Gubbins) scored two goals in a 2-1 win while deputising for Nat Lofthouse in 1958.

I remember it being a perfect day, the sun was shining, fellow Boltonians stood in a grassy beer garden in the capital soaking up the atmosphere, singing songs and anticipating a winnable game.

Then it started and the next thing we knew it was over – not by the referee's whistle but by the scoreline.

However, the worst thing was that I decided to go back to the Wembley concourse midway through the first half and my jaw dropped as I got charged £9.50 for a burger.

Tom Williams

I DON’T remember much about the game itself. I remember Johan Elmander was in midfield, and Martin Petrov wasn’t really anywhere at all. I remember it was absolutely dire. I’ve never watched it back, and I probably never will. Has anyone?

The rot had long since set in, of course.

The game, though, has rightly come to represent the start of the deep decline, just as the win at Anfield in 1993 seemed to be the start of the climb. It feels like the club is still trying to get over it.

Due to it being a Sunday match, and thanks to the favourable draw, we’d done all our celebrating the night before. (There’s some cracking pubs and cheap hotels in Oxford by the way.

Ideal for a League One play-off final). We were still discussing plans for the final, and another European tour, on the way to the ground. Idiots.

Sitting up in the gods, after trying to take the edge off a fierce hangover with a £4 lager, it was the worst day out I can remember; worse than losing to Tranmere.

We never leave early; 6-0 at home to United, 0-5 at half time at Hillsborough – we always sit (or stand) it out. Not on that day though, because at 4-0 down there was nothing to stay for.

There was no affinity with the team, and it was absolutely only going to get worse. The fifth one went in as we went down the steps. It was the day that confirmed that what could occasionally pass as a spirited side with an enthusiastic manager, was actually over-run with overpaid, under-performing journeymen that an inexperienced manager couldn’t hold together.

Once the spirit had gone, the cracks started to show. As Eddie Davies pumped yet more money in to try to arrest the slide, we only hoped they had proper relegation clauses in their huge contracts.

The final insult was getting stuck in the car park for so long that, by the time we got to Watford Gap for a brew and a pee, it was packed with celebrating Stoke fans. They couldn’t believe what had happened either.

Neil Turner