Sex sells, unless it’s about Bolton Wanderers
Tuesday July 28th, 2009
Finally, something to wake Wanderers fans from their summer slumber
Andy O'Brien: Better than sex
It’s not often you see the words ‘Bolton Wanderers’ and ’sex’ in the same headline.
In fact, thanks largely to the existence of Gary Megson, it’s not often you see the words ‘Bolton Wanderers’ and anything remotely interesting and exciting or interesting in the same headline.
But finally, after a summer in which we’ve had the fascinating Paul Robinson transfer saga, the never-ending Ferrie Bodde transfer saga and the ’solid’ (translation: boring) signings of Sam Ricketts and Sean Davis, Manny Road has finally been inspired to actually write something (actually I was going to write something about Zat Knight, if only to use the headline ‘Bolton Wanderers Take Zat!’, but I got drunk instead).
Inspiration came courtesy of the Daily Mail and a story in which the Wanderers were alleged to have been ‘rocked’ (and I thought that tremor in Horwich on Saturday was just caused by me collapsing in a drunken heap on my sister’s sofa) by a sex scandal (for some reason I can’t stop imagining Jack Dearden giving it the old ‘Profumo, Max Mosely, David Beckham, Dirty Den, Jamie Theakston – your boys took one hell of a beating!’).
Of course, the most interesting aspect of this story is not that the club have an anti-discrimination message on their website (what do they expect it to say, ‘no blacks or Irish’?), or that this was not so much about sex as sexism (slightly less exciting), but that the Mail was pretty much the only place you could read it.
The Bolton News, in line with their apparent policy of ignoring anything Bolton Wanderers related that doesn’t read as if it could have been personally penned by Phil Gartside,decided sex doesn’t sell copies of their paper. The rest of the national press were also quiet on the issue, no doubt too pre-occupied by Man City signing their 79th striker of the summer.
Perhaps the papers ignored it because it’s bollocks. Maybe the woman in question is kicking up a fuss over nothing and Gartside’s internal investigation (if you’ll excuse the pun) will clear the club of any wrongdoing. Either way, it surely would have sold more copies of newspapers than the fascinating insights in to Andy O’Brien’s mind that have swamped the Bolton Wanderers news pages over the last couple of days (was going to write something about that too, but Vital Bolton Wanderers already slaughtered O’Brien for his most outlandish claims).
You’d also think that if you were, I don’t know, let’s say a journalist, you might want to follow up on the fact that Gartside is leading the investigation at all. There has already been one whitewash at the Reebok Stadium this summer, when the internal inquiry in to the Sam Allarydyce/Panorama bungs scandal cleared the club of any wrongdoing, that’s another you might have missed while The Bolton News were sending you to sleep with tales of Ferrie Bodde and Paul Robinson.
So, should Gartside be leading internal inquiries? Is Paul Robsinson the most uninspiring summer signing ever? And, most importantly, are you still awake?
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