ONE Whites fan has gone the distance to show that he’s followed his team everywhere they go.

Paul Rushton, 51, a school caretaker from Johnson Fold, remembers his first Whites game as Peter Thompson’s 1978 testimonial against Liverpool. He attended with his uncle, at which point he was a Liverpool fan, but he has been a Wanderer ever since.

He only became a season ticket holder in the last six years but has been following the team and collecting memorabilia from his travels, at car boot sales, and online on websites like Ebay, storing and displaying it all in the spare room of his house.

Paul said: “A lot of people have been giving me stuff recently.

“I’ve been showing people pictures of the room and what I’ve got in there and people have been really keen to give me their memorabilia too.

“There are at least 3,000 programmes piled in there and I think 182 old football shirts in a bit of a walk-in wardrobe.

“I’m always adding to the collection, I’ve been bidding on loads of things on Ebay recently, there isn’t much you will find that I haven’t already got.”

Paul said how his most treasured piece of memorabilia was a programme from the 1946 Burnden Park Disaster game where 33 Bolton fans lost their lives.

His journey to collecting all these Wanderers memories started 20 years ago when he bought the 1958 FA cup final victory match programme.

“After that I just decided to buy every one,” he said.

Reflecting on the start of a new season behind closed doors Paul said: “It’s been very hard not being able to go to the games and support them.

“The amount of season tickets we’ve sold shows how good our fans are and that we’re still big in the community.

“It feels like we’ve turned a corner after the last couple of years now.

“I’m hopeful that in my lifetime we’ll go back to what it was like in the glory days.”