WANDERERS waved goodbye to Burnden Park 20 years ago with arguably the most dominant league campaign in the club’s history.

Records tumbled as Colin Todd’s team scored 100 goals and secured 98 points to lift the Division One title by a country mile.

This summer, The Bolton News will speak to some of the Whites’ heroes of the 1996/97 campaign and uncover some of the secrets to their success.

 

 

NATHAN Blake barely draws a breath as he rattles off the name of every Wanderers player who took to the field in in 1996/97 title-winning season.

“It might be controversial but that was the greatest team I played,” he concluded. “It was certainly the highlight of my career.”

Strange though it may seem for someone who finished the campaign with 24 goals in all competitions but the former Wales international was far from convinced Bolton was where he wanted to be when Colin Todd re-assembled his squad that summer.

The club’s first-ever sojourn into Premier League football had been nothing short of disastrous. The joint-managerial appointment of Roy McFarland and Todd failed and when the sale of fans’ favourite Sasa Curcic was confirmed few were backing an immediate return to the top flight.

“I think I remember reading Gordon Sharrock in the Bolton Evening News saying by selling Sasa we’d thrown away our best chance of promotion,” he laughed. “You journalists do make me laugh, sometimes.”

Blake – who had arrived in a big-money £3.5million deal from Sheffield United the previous December but managed just one Premier League goal – had been branded a flop at Burnden Park and was considering his options.

“I actually wanted to go back to Bramall Lane,” he said. “I’d been living in a hotel, I didn’t really feel like I fit in or that I really knew anyone.

“But I remember coming back in the summer under Colin Todd and it being the hardest slog you’d ever imagine.

“He had us running up reservoirs, through the woods, through parks. You’d feel like you were going to die.

“The lads would have to find a way of urging each other on to get through it, so looking back it was all done on purpose.

“The other thing the manager made compulsory was eating together after training on a Wednesday or Thursday.

“A few of the lads kicked off about it but it made us talk with each other and I started to get friendly with people I’d never even met.

“Suddenly I knew Jimmy Phillips, Tags (Gerry Taggart) or Chris Fairclough. And it went from there.”

The socialising did not stop there. Much like Phil Parkinson’s modern day Whites, the squad could often be seen around town enjoying each other’s company.

“As long as we weren’t playing on the Tuesday we’d go out to Tiggis and eat together, go for a few drinks, and by the time Christmas came around results were going so well we didn’t need to put our hand in our pocket anywhere! It was great.

“I remember Steve McAnespie having a house party and inviting all the wives and girlfriends around – we had to stay respectable then. It was like a room full of politicians.”

Blake got up and running for the season with two goals against Norwich, after which his Bolton blues were banished.

“I felt like I was going to tear people apart after that game,” he said. “I really wanted to prove people wrong.”

An early-season meeting with Wolves also sticks in the striker’s mind.

“I remember Toddy winding us up for weeks about that one,” he said. “I think McGinlay scored twice and wound them up good and proper.

“By the time they came back to Burnden Park it was carnage. Mass brawl and everything.”

The infamous Battle of Burnden would see Wanderers inflict a body blow on one of their promotion rivals in more than one sense.

McGinlay and Blake scored either side of a Keith Curle own goal and the touch-paper was lit.

“No-one was stopping us after that,” Blake said. “We put seven past Swindon and made one of their radio commentators cry. Can you imagine if that happened these days with social media? He’d have never heard the end of it.”

A total of 55 goals was shared between McGinlay and Blake in all competitions – but had it not been for Todd’s insistence they roomed together, the relationship may not have been so prosperous.

“I didn’t really know him,” Blake said. “Toddy forced us together and it was like the odd couple. He was a right messy so-and-so and I was quite neat. But it ended up being like a brotherly thing.

“On the pitch, we didn’t need to work on anything. We didn’t spend hours on the training ground or anything like that – it was just natural.”

Wanderers won the title by 18 clear points and would secure top spot at Manchester City, who could finish only mid-table.

The Blake-McGinlay double act went down in history as one of the most prolific in the Whites’ history.

“I remember hearing someone had named their twins ‘Nathan’ and ‘Blake’ so there’s probably a few more 20-year-old’s knocking around in Bolton now whose mum or dad rated me at the time,” laughed the 45-year-old, who has since moved back to South Wales.

“I only have one regret about that season. I watched Sky Sports the other day and saw Jamie Pollock score the 100th goal but it still peeves me we didn’t beat Tranmere and get the 100 points on the last day.

“That result still puts me in a bad mood 20 years later.”