Ex-Bolton Wanderers manager Bruce Rioch's exclusive interview, part six

Two promotions, a League Cup final and a run of audacious giant-killings were crammed into three successful season’s under Rioch’s watch as Legends were made.

Three decades on, The Bolton News sat down to talk with one of Wanderers’ greatest-ever managers to talk in detail about his time with the club.

In the final part of our series, Rioch discusses his final game – the 1995 play-off final – and the decision to leave for Arsenal.

“IT was unfortunate how it ended.”

The words spilled confessionally from Bruce Rioch, and after nearly two hours of engaging conversation and anecdotes we come to the one moment of true regret from his three years at Wanderers.

Thirty years on, you would surely be hard-pressed to find a Bolton supporter who still holds against him the decision to move to Arsenal, just as a place in the Premier League had been won.

But with the benefit of hindsight, we know how it unfolded for him at Highbury. Rioch’s solitary season in charge of the Gunners would be airbrushed from history as it merely paved the way for Arsene Wenger’s long and distinguished reign.

Bolton, meanwhile, would look ill-suited to top-flight football during a failed managerial experiment of their own when they paired Colin Todd with Roy McFarland, the former leading them back to the promised land in a glorious way that deserves its own reverential treatment.

At the time, there was resentment among some supporters. Rioch had led them to such highs in his three years that anything seemed possible, and had he stayed on, who knows if the Premier League would have proved such an impossible hurdle to climb?

What is clear, however, is that three decades later, Rioch still wrestles with the morality and logic of his decision. Typically, it was made more with family in mind than football – even though the most ardent Wanderers fanatic must admit Arsenal’s ornate marbled halls were a step up on Burnden. But the timing of it all meant even as that brilliant comeback at Wembley against Reading was still being digested, there was a pang of disappointment to be swallowed with it.

“My family were living in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, and the play-off game had ended,” Rioch explained. “We were due up in Bolton for the Town Hall celebration after Wembley.

“I got home that evening and the phone rang. It was Arsenal and they wanted to meet me.

“I had no idea before the play-off and I told them I had to go and meet with the chairman and the board, do the celebration, but that I would speak with them when I came back. That is exactly how it happened.

“Arsenal’s training ground was just the other side of St Alban’s, about 20 minutes from where I lived, and my twin grandsons had just been born, May 23. And it was Arsenal, all said and done.

“It was the combination of those three things, but I look back now and think: ‘Gee, I was on a good thing at Bolton. Everything was right.’ “That’s life, I suppose. I always think what I would have done if it had been another club?

“I remember Gordon Hargreaves saying to me that he couldn’t stop me meeting with them, he knew the whole picture.

“I left something that was going great and then a year later I was out of work.”

Rioch’s last managerial job was in Aalborg, Denmark, in 2008, after which he moved to Cornwall with his family. But for helping out some of the local grassroots clubs from time to time, he is now happy in retirement and able to take a big picture approach to the 44 years he spent in the game.

“You have to value and appreciate the good times,” he said. “And that is why I will always be enthused about my time at Bolton, you have to enjoy the good times.

“At Middlesbrough when they went through liquidation there were two promotions and a cup final, which was amazing considering we only had 14 players the first year, 15 the second. A year later, you are fired.

“Colin Henderson was the chairman at the time, Steve Gibson was a director back then, but after Gordon Hargreaves he is the best chairman I have ever worked for. My affinity to that club, like Bolton, will never change. It is very, very special.

“It never leaves you. I sit on a Saturday afternoon and watch the results come through and I will look for Cambridge City, who were one of the teams I supported when I was a kiddie, but other than that it’s Bolton and Middlesbrough.

“Circumstances happen, but I have always thought it was important not only to join a club with a smile on your face but also to leave one with a smile on my face.

“I can be sad, disappointed, but I am never bitter. Frank O’Farrell used to say to me when I was his coach: ‘Whatever you do in your life, Bruce, never become bitter. It will eat you.’ “I took that at Torquay in about 1981/82, and it has stayed with me all my life.

“I am happy to go back to any club I have worked for down the years.

“Being bitter isn’t in my character.”

There are a couple of beats of silence. We could finish the interview right there and then but it feels like the wrong note on which to do so.

We haven’t talked about that night at Anfield for a start.

No Bolton fan needs much of a reminder. In 1992/93, Wanderers had beaten Sutton Coldfield and Rochdale to set up a third round FA Cup tie against holders Liverpool.

They drew two apiece at a frosty Burnden Park before heading to Merseyside, where Rioch’s team would glow White Hot.

“What memories we made,” laughed Rioch. “I mean, none of us will forget going to Liverpool, will we?

“It was a magical night. Of course, we’d drawn at home at Burnden Park then beaten them at Anfield. Didsy (David Lee), Tony Kelly, John McGinlay, Andy Walker, they were just unplayable – the game of their lives, I think.

“But here’s something you might not know. Our reserve team then beat Liverpool’s reserves the following week, and then our youth team beat Liverpool a couple of weeks after that!

“I remember saying to Toddy: ‘You know, we’ll pay the price for this.’ “And, of course, it happened at Wembley in 1995. They got their own back.

“Even thought that game ended in defeat we went there, we have everything, and it was another great memory – leading that team out and seeing thousands of our fans who had been through it all.”

The run to the 1995 Coca Cola Cup final does not often get a mention, as it was intertwined with other cup successes and topped by that marvellous play-off final.

Ipswich, Sheffield United, West Ham, Norwich and Swindon were beaten en-route to the capital, where Rioch’s side were praised for the way they took on Liverpool’s soon-to-be Spice Boys without a fear in the world.

Just 40 days later, Wanderers were back at Wembley, having despatched Wolves in a passion-filled play-off semi-final.

Again, Bolton fans know the narrative by now. Lee Nogan and Aidy Williams put Reading 2-0 up and Keith Branagan saved a penalty from Stuart Lovell which would surely have put the game out of reach.

“When I think about the play-off final, I always think about Ian McNeil and the bit of advice that probably won us the game that day,” said Rioch of his cherished chief scout.

“Ian was great at finding strikers. When he was at Chelsea he found players like Kerry Dixon, David Speedie, Pat Nevin, for me he got John McGinlay in, Mixu Paatelainen, Owen Coyle, and then when he went to Leeds United with George Graham for a spell he brought Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink over. He was great at spotting that type of player.

“But the one thing he always said was: ‘Bruce, you have to collect strikers, they will always win you games.’ “He felt that too often when he was watching games that a manager makes a substitution and takes one striker off, then puts another on. He was adamant that you could change a game more by adding another striker to the pitch.

“So when we got to that play-off final and we could have been three down at half time but the score is 2-0, I am walking across the pitch to speak with the referee, Ian’s words were echoing around in my head. I got to him and said I am making a substitution, Neil McDonald off, Fabian Defreitas on. I’d gone from 4-3-3 to 4-2-4.

“We had McGinlay, Coyle, Paatelainen and Defreitas on the pitch at the same time. And who scored the goals?

“Those words of wisdom had stayed with me.”

Owen Coyle and Fabian DeFreitas had forced the game into extra time, by which point Bolton were an unstoppable juggernaut. Mixu Paatelainen put them ahead and DeFreitas added a fourth before Jimmy Quinn’s late consolation.

One of the most dramatic games played at the old Wembley, Rioch still marvels at the contrasts he witnessed that day.

“If that play-off final taught me anything it was that the emotions of the fans can go from sheer sadness to absolute elation 45 minutes later,” he said.

“It is amazing what this game can do to you. Our fans were as low as you could ever wish at 2-0 down, going in at half time in a play-off final.

“But then a half of football later we’d turned it around completely. There was no winner in that game. The emotions of thousands of people, a whole fanbase, had turned on a sixpence – and where else in life do you get that, other than sport? It is amazing.

“You don’t want to go through that too often. It has been my one life and my one career and I have enjoyed it immensely.

“I started in 1963, have managed to play at a World Cup for Scotland – even though we didn’t win it like they expected we would – worked in America, Denmark, for some wonderful clubs before I called it a day.

“At Bolton, though, they were three of the best years of my life in football. I am trying to think of anything that was better.

“It wasn’t just the results, two promotions and a League Cup final, it was the enjoyment of working at the football club with the people. It meant such a great deal to me, and I hope by catching up and having an enjoyable chat to you, we can all remember what a wonderful place it is.”