Total Belief: How Bruce Rioch Brought the Good Times Back to Bolton Wanderers

By Chris Evans

Total Belief looks back at three incredible years in the early 1990s when Bruce Rioch transformed the fortunes of a football club on its knees.

In the summer of 1992, Bolton Wanderers were a club in distress. With an aging stadium and struggling in the league, chairman Gordon Hargreaves made the difficult decision to sack manager Phil Neal and employ Bruce Rioch and his assistant Colin Todd.

Over the next three seasons, Bruce began to change attitudes by instilling a new mentality. Working his players hard on the pitch and restricting their lives off it, Bruce won the hearts of players and fans alike.

With his blend of youth and experience, Bruce took Bolton on incredible cup runs with attractive attacking football that finally brought the crowds back to Burnden Park. The story ended with yet another cup run and two trips to Wembley, including one of the most dramatic comebacks of all time. Sadly, the celebrations were cut short as Bruce Rioch left to join Arsenal, but his legacy lives on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781801508100

Chris Evans

Chris Evans is also the author of the Iron Elves saga: A Darkness Forged in Fire, The Light of Burning Shadows, and Ashes of a Black Frost, as well as Of Bond and Thunder, and the nonfiction book Bloody Jungle: The War in Vietnam. He is a military historian and former editor for Random House and Stackpole Books. Born in Canada, he lives in New York City.

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Prologue: Embers of Optimism

BOLTON WANDERERS Football Club, founder members of the Football League and a club with a proud history. Formed in 1874 by the Rev Joseph Farrall Wright and Thomas Ogden as Christchurch FC, the fledgling club were based out of the Deane Road church with the same name. Following a dispute with the vicar, they switched to the current moniker just three years later, eventually finding a home at Pikes Lane before moving to Burnden Park, on Manchester Road, in 1895. Although Bolton have never managed to win a league title, they are four-time winners of the FA Cup including the famous 1923 ‘White Horse Final’, the first at the new Empire Stadium (the original name of Wembley), when an estimated 200,000 people saw them lift the cup for the first time. Bolton have also been runners-up three times including what is arguably considered to be the greatest FA Cup Final of them all. In what is known as the ‘Matthews Final’, Bolton would eventually lose out to Lancashire rivals Blackpool with Sir Stanley Matthews playing a pivotal role in reversing a 3-1 deficit to win the game 4-3.

The Trotters (a nickname with no official origin but thought to be linked to a pig farm close to their original home ground, a Lancastrian delicacy served up either as a pre-match meal, or a word meaning practical joker) have spent most of their existence in the upper echelons of English football. They stand 13th in the all-time top-flight table and have regularly rubbed shoulders with the giants of the domestic game. They nurtured David Jack, the first £10,000 footballer, from 1920–28; Eddie Hopkinson, the England goalkeeper who holds the club record for appearances; and more recently, the tough-tackling Peter Reid who went on to be a leading name in Everton’s two title wins in the mid-1980s.

No history lesson would be complete without mention of Nat Lofthouse OBE, a one-club man who still holds one of the best goals-per-game ratios of any English international centre-forward with 30 goals from just 33 caps. In an era with fewer international fixtures, and none against the minnow nations, the record is staggering. Lofthouse passed away in 2011 and was still active at the club until just before his death. As a player, manager, then life president, Lofthouse is Bolton’s most famous son and is widely regarded as one of England’s best ever strikers. Lofthouse, affectionately referred to as the ‘Lion of Vienna’ after his double strike for England in an away game in Austria, was a humble man and put his international goalscoring down to the incredible service he received from the likes of Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews.

Despite an abundance of historical success, the period leading up to 1992 was not a happy one. By the late 1980s, English football had seen better days. The game had been blighted by racism and hooliganism problems for the past two decades, resulting in falling attendances. No club felt the pain more than Bolton. There was brief optimism in 1985 as England and Liverpool legend Phil Neal joined the club as player-manager. The club ended the season 18th in the Third Division with brief hopes of a phoenix-like moment fading away rapidly. The 1986/87 season saw the introduction of a new play-off system and Bolton were among the first victims, losing to Aldershot (of the Fourth Division) over two legs, thus relegating them to the bottom tier for the first time in their history. Joining other Football League founder members Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley on the lowest rung of the professional game in England for the 1987/88 season, fans wondered just how far the club could fall. Things got even worse when Bolton suffered a 4-0 defeat away at Football League new boys Scarborough. Scarborough were the minnows of the Fourth Division and had gained access to the league as the first club to gain promotion from the GM Vauxhall Conference following a rule change. Prior to Scarborough’s promotion, the team finishing top of the non-league pyramid could only gain access to the Football League if the other clubs voted for them to replace the team finishing bottom of the Fourth Division. This rarely happened, but with the new rule change came the real risk of a team like Bolton dropping out of the league.

Neal kept his job and Bolton eventually started winning matches. They ended the season strongly with 6-0 and 4-0 victories in their final two home games to end the season third, claiming the final automatic promotion spot. This may have been seen as the start of a revival, but with home crowds often under 5,000 (in some cases less than 4,000 turned up), there was clearly a lot more to do before anyone could claim that the turnaround had truly been completed. It was hard to believe that Bolton had once been watched by 69,912 fans in a home FA Cup tie against Manchester City. The club was a shadow of the one that had spent so long in the top level of English football.

The 1988/89 season was mediocre at best. Other than a cup run that saw Bolton back at Wembley to lift the Sherpa Van Trophy by thrashing Torquay United 4-1, there was nothing to write home about. League form was patchy and crowds remained around the 5,000 mark other than for a few games where a large away following swelled the numbers. There was a new harsh reality; Bolton were no longer out of place in the bottom two divisions. Local teams Oldham Athletic and Blackburn Rovers had historically been seen as lesser teams than Bolton, but were now regulars in the Second Division, occasionally threatening to be promoted to the First Division. Bolton felt like they were light years away from such dizzy heights and were realistically more likely to be seen as being on par with Wigan Athletic or Bury.

The 1989/90 season saw the arrival of a new strike force. Bolton paid £50,000 to bring in Tony Philliskirk from Preston North End, while £80,000 secured the services of David Reeves from Sheffield Wednesday. With the new-found goal power, things were going well, with the team hovering around the promotion places for the bulk of the season. However, they seemed to lose momentum, struggling for wins from mid-March onwards. They just about crept into the play-offs but failed to turn around their losing form, bowing out over two legs to Notts County.

Despite winning the first two games of 1990/91, the slump continued and Bolton picked up only three points in September and nine points in October. Due to a league restructure, four sides were to be promoted this season and local journalists knew that Bolton would never have a better opportunity to go up. Questions started to be asked of Phil Neal, but the side turned things around once again and began to climb the table. Despite winning four of the last five league games, Bolton missed out on the automatic positions by virtue of a lesser goal difference than third-placed Grimsby Town. The fact that they were only three points behind champions Cambridge United was a bitter pill to swallow and must have been playing on the players’ minds as they entered the playoffs for the second successive year. In the semi-final, Bolton despatched local rivals Bury over two legs. The home leg saw over 19,000 fans at Burnden Park. It felt as though this was it, the real revival was here. Sadly, it was not to be. Philliskirk recalls that the team froze at Wembley against a Tranmere Rovers side that Bolton had twice beaten earlier in the season. The disappointment was deflating and would prove to be too much for Neal to overcome.

The 1991/92 season was do or die for Neal. Crowds had risen slightly and expectation was high, but sadly the campaign never really got going. Neal brought in Andy Walker, on loan initially, from Celtic in January, but despite his goals (15 in the league), the team’s form remained weak and Bolton ended the season in a disappointing 13th. With only one win from mid-March, crowds fell back to the 4,000 mark again and many voiced concerns that the club was going nowhere under the former Liverpool player’s leadership. At the end of the season, chairman Gordon Hargreaves made the decision to terminate Neal’s contract and the search for a new boss began.

1

Walking Down the Manny Road

IF THE decline of Bolton Wanderers could be summed up in a physical form, Burnden Park in August 1992 would be about right. Since 1895 Bolton had called Burnden Park home, but what was once a cavernous stadium filled with flat-capped, pipe-smoking mill workers was now as sorry-looking as the team on its bobbly pitch. Burnden Park will forever be known for two events, the first being an FA Cup Final replay in 1901 that ended up being known as ‘Pie Day’. After a 2-2 draw at Crystal Palace, the replay between Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield United was switched to Burnden Park due to the relatively large capacity. However, the distance from London and issues on the railways meant that only 20,000 turned up on the day, meaning that tens of thousands of pies remained unsold.

The second infamous event was a more sombre one: the Burnden Park disaster of 1946. Over 87,000 fans were thought to have entered the stadium for a match between Bolton and Stoke City, well above capacity. The Railway End of the stadium became far too crowded, causing crush barriers to mangle. The crowd surged forward and, in total, 33 people sadly lost their lives. Remarkably, the match resumed and was played to a morbid conclusion, with dead bodies piled up along the side of the pitch. It would be another 50 years before the football authorities saw fit to bring in minimum standards that were anywhere near to being sufficient.

Less than a decade after the disaster, Burnden Park would be immortalised by the painter L.S. Lowry in his Going to the Match masterpiece. The Football Association would later pay £1.9m for the work that depicted trademark matchstick men in cloth caps rushing towards a packed Burnden Park for a big match.

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Sadly, by 1992 the number of people required to pack the stadium has become less and less as various regulations and restrictions have reduced the capacity of Burnden Park, which is still made up largely of imprinted concrete terracing and wooden seats.

Part of the matchday experience for many is the walk from Bolton town centre down Manchester Road to Burnden. Public houses such as Churchill’s, the Waggon and Horses and the King William are filled with smoke from nervous fans smoking their Benson and Hedges before the game and, more often than not, by supporters drowning their sorrows after another miserable loss. Fans can call into the Bolton Pie Shop which sells its savoury delights for 40p (or three for £1.10) or Rice’N’Easy, the Chinese chippy. The smell of Bovril, and hawkers calling ‘Programmes for sale’ give Burnden a real by-gone era feel.

In the summer of 1992 Burnden Park is a mess. The main stand, or Manchester Road Stand to give it its proper name, has barely changed since it was constructed. A wooden seating area houses basic facilities which sit above a small terraced area to either side of the players’ tunnel. Down the tunnel is a narrow corridor leading to the small changing rooms. On the outside, a carbuncle of a structure has been added to house the offices and boardroom. Below this is the old-fashioned ticket office with its tiny windows, sticking out like a sore thumb into the recently tarmacked car park. The club shop run by Alan Bell is also found in this stand. A small operation, known as Happy Shop to older fans, sells Matchwinner replica kits, old programmes and little else.

To the South is the Great Lever End, ‘great’ not being the most appropriate word to describe the 1992 version. The Lever End of the ground is still surrounded by rows of tightly packed Victorian terraced houses, which branch off at right angles from Croft Street in a gridiron pattern. Dim orange street lamps and the shadows cast from the rusting floodlight pylons at either side of the badly painted roof give a real throwback feeling to fans as they walked down the partly exposed cobbles to the main home supporter sections of the ground.

Formerly a large terrace area, the decision was made to install seats in the Lever End at the end of the 1970s. The reason for this may have been linked to the ongoing hooligan problem, but was possibly more to do with safety issues in the decrepit stand. Whether it was the fact that seating would have a reduced capacity, and thus weight, allowing the stand to remain in use, or the idea that installing seats was cheaper than upgrading the twisted cast-iron crush barriers is irrelevant as the seats were installed despite the protests of regulars. Some may have seen the installation of seats as a bold and modern move; however, these seats are not the comfortable kind. These seats (presumably cheaper) are a strange green colour and are not retractable, resembling the sort of thing you might sit on in a factory canteen in any of the aging red-brick mills scattered around the town. The seats are bolted to the existing terrace, meaning little leg room and no real steepness of angle. This is not the place to sit if you want a great view of the game. The stand, like most stadiums in England in 1992, has large metal fences at the front but the attempt to combat the ongoing hooligan problem also obstructs the view for those sitting near the front. Add to this the fact that the old terrace has several pillars holding up the leaky roof, and a planning oversight which means that some seats have been installed directly behind the pillars and this is possibly one of the worst examples of an all-seater stand in the Football League. To top it all off, they have even put seats directly under some of the drainpipes, so people not only don’t see much of the game, they get soaked doing so.

To the east of the stadium is the Burnden Terrace and stand. From pitch-side, this stand looks the part when packed full of supporters; however this is something of a rarity in 1992. It is in the bowels of the stand that you get more evidence that the stadium is well past its sell-by date. Overflowing toilets, a caged-off area housing training equipment, and minimal facilities make every game feel like you have clicked through the rusting Ellison iron turnstiles and stepped into a time machine (or into a pool of water overflowing from the patched-up plumbing of the basic toilets). The capacity of the stand has been reduced over the years, but it is still something to behold for the big matches. Behind the terrace is a wooden seated area that has similarly poor facilities for fans willing to pay a little extra.

Finally, the laughing stock of Bolton. The once gigantic Railway Embankment, well one third of it anyway. In 1986, Burnden Park was clearly too big for the current levels of attendance. The club was in serious financial trouble and the answer was to sell off some land to Normid, a brand name used for the largest of Co-op superstores. The original designs looked futuristic with a supermarket sat behind a small terrace and even a sports hall on the roof. What was eventually built is a monstrosity. Taking up two-thirds of the stand, a giant brick wall now blocks the views of half of the remaining third. A yellow line is marked diagonally across the terrace with a sign warning visiting fans that views may be obstructed for those unfortunate enough to stand beyond it. For big away followings, half of those fans will have no option but to stand on the wrong side of the line, thus missing out on half of the action on the pitch. Once a massive terrace complete with steam engines passing mid-match, the Embankment is now one of the worst stands in English football. Away fans regularly mock Bolton by singing ‘You only sing when you’re shopping’ while getting a soaking from the elements given the open-air nature of the stand.

Bolton fans are strongly attached to Burnden, but as the modern game begins to change, the reality is that the board will eventually have to make big decisions about modernising the ground, or relocating. Either will require huge investment, something that Bolton simply do not have unless the team can get back to the big time. Finding the right man to replace Phil Neal seems like a crucial move for the future of the club.

2

The Assassin

BORN IN Aldershot in 1947, Bruce Rioch is the son of a sergeant major in the Scots Guards, a fact that has seemed to follow him throughout his football career. The Rioch family moved around the country due to his father’s career. His obsession with football developed very early, watching Cambridge United and Cambridge City on alternate weekends during his time living in the city. Dad Jim would take Bruce and his brothers to the park to kick a ball about on a regular basis, teaching him the basics and allowing his skills to develop. The family moved to Luton and Bruce signed on professional terms for the Hatters, making his full debut in 1964 and helping Luton to the Fourth Division title. However, in 1966, his younger brother Neil made footballing headlines as the first Englishman to touch the ball in the World Cup Final between England and West Germany – he was a ballboy who picked up the ball ten seconds after kick off when West Germany’s Wolfgang Overath kicked the ball into touch.

Bruce soon attracted attention from bigger teams and, in the summer of 1969, Aston Villa of the Second Division paid £100,000 for his services. Villa manager Tommy Docherty had passed up on the chance of signing a schoolboy Rioch when he was previously the manager of Chelsea. His performance that day must have stuck with him, as Docherty eventually got his man. Rioch described himself as an inside-forward and his goals helped propel Villa up the leagues. They were just pipped to promotion in 1974 and Bruce knew that, at 26, he needed to make the move now if he wanted to fulfil his ambitions. With the agreement of the Villa hierarchy, Bruce decided to join First Division Derby County, turning down Arsenal due to him believing that the London club’s style of play would not suit him. His time at Derby is remembered for his midfield partnership with Archie Gemmill and Henry Newton, where he gained the nickname ‘The Assassin’ for his tough-tackling style. Rioch hit 15 goals in the 1974/75 season as the Rams lifted the First Division title. Rioch also won the first of 24 Scotland caps in this season as he played the best football of his career.

Derby finished fourth the following year and started the 1976/77 season poorly, resulting in a change of manager and a transfer to Everton for Rioch. The move to Goodison did not last long; Bruce and his wife Jane longed for a return to the Midlands and some of the Everton hierarchy did not appreciate Rioch’s tough tackling which some considered to be reckless. After parting ways with the Toffeemen, the talented midfielder ended up back at Derby. However, the second spell did not rekindle the title-winning form of the first and after several clashes with the new Derby boss Colin Addison, Bruce found himself out on loan, initially at Birmingham City and then with Sheffield United. He was never to return to Derby, moving to Seattle Sounders in the North American Soccer League before returning as player-coach at Torquay United.

In 1982, Rioch was promoted to the role of player-manager at Torquay, and had a respectable mid-table finish in his inaugural season. However, in January of 1984, Bruce left the club in disgrace after breaking the jaw of 17-yearold player Colin Anderson in a training-ground bust-up. Rioch accepted that he was in the wrong and resigned from his post, working briefly in the USA before coming back to English football with Middlesbrough. Rioch started life brightly in the north-east, gaining promotion to the Second Division despite unprecedented financial turmoil at the club. In fact, that season was almost a non-starter when Rioch and his team turned up to find padlocks on the gates to Ayresome Park after bills had been unpaid. The entire squad, including Rioch, were sacked as the club were issued with a winding up order. Showing his character, Rioch chose not to walk away, but set about his responsibilities the best he could, improvising training facilities and instilling a siege mentality within his squad. After days of hectic discussions behind the scenes, paperwork was submitted just in time and the club was saved, allowing Rioch to get on with the job. The galvanised team gained momentum and incredibly won promotion.

It was during this period that Rioch formed the template for the kind of manager he would become, telling players that discipline was more crucial than skill. Rioch led by example, always punctual and smart. He expected players to be cleanshaven and sober. These demands were initially met with some resistance from the likes of Tony Mowbray, but as they saw results improving on the pitch, the players bought into what Bruce was doing and accepted that his high standards were responsible for the success he was achieving.

Rioch followed up the success with an immediate promotion to the First Division, prompting Boro legend Bernie Slaven to announce that the manager should be knighted. Middlesbrough started well and Rioch was a hot property, but football fortunes can quickly change. Form dipped and Middlesbrough were relegated. The next season saw another struggle and with the club staring at successive relegations, Rioch left his post by mutual consent just weeks before he was due to lead his side out at Wembley in the Zenith Data Systems Cup Final.

He was quickly back in work, this time at Millwall where