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    My write-up of the Big Day Out in Bolton Archived Message

    Posted by TrueFaithBook on 9/11/2021, 1:34 pm

    Hi, just thought I'd share my write-up of the trip to Bolton on Sunday. Hopefully this comes across well in the piece, but I really did have a great time, one of the best atmospheres I've ever been in at a football match.

    Here's a link to my facebook if you'd care to show some love over there. Thanks a lot, hope you enjoy.

    https://www.facebook.com/truefaithbookmcr/posts/202004025399903

    Match number 33 wanted to do the mature thing. It texted me and said, “come on, we’re both adults”. And so we agreed to meet for a coffee. But I could tell things weren’t going well. Match number 33 just couldn’t - or wouldn’t - meet my eye. It stared down into its Cappuccino with a teaspoon in hand, folded the top layer of froth down into scolding depths below and slowly but surely bumbled its way towards a grim but inevitable truth. Three lifetimes, two sugars, and one plastic-wrapped biscoff biscuit later, I heard the words that I’d been dreading long before a ball had even been kicked: “I’m sorry, I hate to be the one to say this and yes, we’ve had fun but I can’t go on like this any longer… Look, the truth is, I know it’s shallow, but I feel how I feel, and the truth is… size… matters. Size, really matters. I’m sorry”.

    On a personal level, yesterday was a day of firsts. It was the first time this season that I’ve had my bag searched on entry, the first time I’ve spent 10 minutes queuing for a pint of Coors Light, and the first time I’ve been part of a crowd of over 10,000 people. I could write that I’ve grown accustomed to life outside the football league but I’d be lying, because in all honesty, I’ve completely fallen in love with it. There’s an undeniable allure to it all; the simple, human pleasures of switching ends at half-time and stopping for a pint on your way through, of buying chips with your change and hearing the players’ shouts as clearly as if they were all mic’d up like Madonna.

    But this isn’t about me or my firsts. Because there were 11,182 other people gathered in the University of Macron DW Stadium yesterday afternoon, and 5110 of them were there in support of the National League’s Stockport County. That’s the fifth tier of English football, and over 5000 travelling supporters. Some are saying it’s their biggest away following since Tranmere in 1965, whilst others reckon that it’s since a trip to Everton back in the 90’s, but everyone’s together in agreement that it’s certainly their biggest day out this side of the Y2K scare.

    Less than two weeks have passed since the previous manager was dismissed. In that time County have replaced him with a club ex-captain who also happens to possess one of the best CV’s in non-league football and scored five goals courtesy of five different scorers. It’s no surprise then, that as I waited in the wings of the stadium and queued up for my pint of quasi-lager, I was surrounded on all sides by scenes that served as the spiritual meeting point of ‘9am in Marks and Spencers on Black Friday’ and ‘10pm on Mike’s stag-do in Amsterdam’. It was wild. Scarves twirled, feet bounced and hands clapped together; phone cameras panned from left to right then back again, swivelling round in an attempt to memorise the good times, recording digital proof that regardless of what may be about to happen on the pitch, in the stands there was togetherness, optimism, and an endless, rolling chant of “David Challinor’s Blue and White Army”.

    I found myself in conversation with one of the supporters as he waited for his friend to return from the bar. We stood against a back wall, either side of a transparent bin-liner and chatted whilst the revelry unfolded before us. I motioned towards the chaos and rhetorically asked if it’d been a while since he’d seen a concourse like it; he replied, “it’s been a while since I’ve seen a concourse at all”. And that, in a nutshell, is why the day felt so important; because there are no 28,000 seater stadiums outside the football league, and this is exactly the kind of spectacle that County have been missing out on over the last decade.

    Now, in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t actually support Stockport County. Yes, I’d like them to succeed, but only because their supporters have been so welcoming to me over the past few months. They’ve been good to me and so I want things to go well for them. It’s that simple. There’s no historical bond or geographical allegiance, I’m just an outsider looking in, writing about what I find along the way. But standing in that away end, encircled by flares, fists, and four generations of faith, I became hopelessly - and perhaps embarrassingly - swept up by the occasion.

    Beyond all the smoke bombs, vape clouds and pyrotechnics, there was something special in the air that day; it was an atmosphere that I hadn’t experienced since before the pandemic and although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at the time, I now realise that I was just really, really happy to be there, playing my tiny little part in such a formidable, undeniable scene. And do you know what the best part is? They drew 2-2; we get to do the whole thing again next week at Edgeley Park. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

    Bolton Wanderers 2 -2 Stockport County

    07 11 21

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