Wembley, the last Saturday in May. Look up from the pitch and there was no crowd in the ordinary sense of the word. There was a wall. White, tier on tier, end to end, holding songs for ninety minutes and holding it long after the whistle. 4-1 and a return to the Championship after seven years away.
The players have not stopped talking about it since. Steven Schumacher has been open that they ran further that afternoon because of what came down from the stands.
But Wembley was borrowed. The wall came down when we left.
On Saturday it goes up at home at the Toughsheet Community Stadium and this time it stays up!
12:30pm, Preston North End, live on Sky Sports, the first Championship football at the Toughsheet Community Stadium in seven years. More than 25,000 in, 16,500 of you season ticket holders who bought this exact afternoon months ago. Preston will fill their end and let us know about it. Good. That is what this fixture has always been.
Get in early and start it before the players do
A 12:30pm kick-off and the biggest crowd this ground has seen in seven years. Put those two things together and everything happens earlier than you are used to - the roads into Horwich, the car parks, the queues at the turnstiles. Set off earlier than feels necessary and you will not regret it.
There is plenty to come early for. The Boxoso Premier Suite fan zone is open from 10am, the Dreams 2 Reality Fan Zone from 10:30am, and the Club Shop and Ticket Office open from 9am. The Bolton Stadium Hotel will be open as well. Turnstiles open at 11am.
Please do not leave it to the last minute. A crowd this size does not move through a turnstile quickly and nobody wants to be stood on a concourse hearing the walkout rather than watching it.
Be in your seat for it, because Jade Assembly’s rerecorded Our Town takes the teams out for the first time on Saturday - written about this town, recorded in it.
The best afternoons this ground has staged were never a reaction to a goal. They were the reason for one.
Only a small number of single seats now remain: BUY HERE.
The new home shirt has moved quicker than anything we have put out in years and there are sizes left before Saturday: BUY HERE
One Wanderers Family
More than 25,000 people will get Saturday right as they do every week. This is a family club - grandparents, parents and children together - and it stays that way because of how the overwhelming majority of you carry yourselves.
All we ask is that you tell us the moment the very small minority try to spoil it. That is what One Wanderers Family is for. Text or WhatsApp 07542 850 902 with the block, row and seat number if you can, speak to your nearest steward, or report it here through the club website. Discrimination of any kind can also be reported directly to Kick It Out. Every report is treated in strict confidence and every report is acted on.
See It. Report It. Stop It. Love Football, Protect The Game.
A reminder on pyros
A flare burns hot enough to take skin off. It goes off in a stand where children, older supporters and people who cannot breathe easily are sitting shoulder to shoulder with it and they have nowhere to go.
They are also illegal inside a football ground. Anyone caught with one faces arrest, a club ban and a football banning order. Where an incident meets the threshold for criminal action, the club will pursue it alongside Greater Manchester Police, without exception.
The same applies on the trains, where a single device takes a service out of use and strands hundreds of Wanderers who did nothing wrong.
Greater Manchester Police will have more officers than usual around the ground and at Horwich Parkway on Saturday. That is standard for a fixture of this size.
Every week from here
The wall does not belong to Wembley. It belongs to a Tuesday night in November as much as to Saturday lunchtime on Sky. Build it once and we spend a season being the hardest place in this division to come to.
We are on this journey together and we could not be prouder of you all. Enjoy your season.
Come On You Whites!