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Talk of promotions and silverware sounded fanciful when Gethin Jones started his Bolton Wanderers journey.
Officially billed as ‘Trialist’ in his first run out at Atherton Colls in a practice game viewed only by a handful of socially distanced people and a few fans perched on wheelie bins around the outskirts of the ground, just one team-mate remains from those sun-kissed, silent days.
Now, 100 games into his career as a Wanderer, and looking to the possibility of not one, but two Wembley trips this season, Jones can finally point back and say “I told you so!”
Ricardo Santos is the only other player to survive those crazy early days of friendlies at Bamber Bridge and Loughborough University, and a promotion season spend playing behind closed doors.
But having passed a century of games for the club last weekend, Jones can reflect on the fact he show of faith has been rewarded.
“It feels like a long time ago now but I remember clearly getting told that Bolton were interested,” he said. “It was just after Covid and Carlisle United had wanted to keep me on but the minute I’d talked to the manager I knew it was the right move for me.
“He’d said from the start that the aim was to get the club back up to the Premier League and maybe that would have been a strange thing to say at that point.
“I remember speaking to you guys back in League Two, I think was after the Port Vale game where we’d lost 6-3 at home, and on that day we could have scored eight or nine goals. We were near the bottom of the table but it was the type of football we played, I always thought it would be successful.
“This year we have worked really hard on making ourselves hard to beat, keeping clean sheets, and that comes as a team. Strikers, midfielders, they all do their bit for that.
“I honestly knew way back then that it would come good at some stage, and hopefully it does for us this season.”
Jones has been through more than most in nearly three years with Wanderers.
A few injuries mean he trails Santos by 17 games on the appearance front but so long as he is picked against Peterborough, he will move past Joel Dixon and level with Dapo Afolayan as the second-most-used player in Ian Evatt’s managerial career to date.
Unlike their hosts on Saturday, Bolton have rarely dipped out of the top six during the first half of the season, and victory at the Weston Homes Stadium could theoretically put them third, depending on results for Ipswich and Derby.
“You’ve seen in the last two years that we seem to kick on in the second half of the season and I honestly don’t know why that is,” Jones said. “We’d said at the start of this season that we want to be flying the whole time but I suppose football doesn’t work like that.
“There have been a couple of spells where form hasn’t been quite what we wanted it to be but I think we have been in there from the start. We’re in a great position now to kick on.
“All the work that has happened outside the football, the stuff Sharon (Brittan) has been doing, it just makes you feel like it is building back to what it should be.”
Wanderers beat Peterborough 1-0 at the UniBol earlier this season and since the return of Darren Ferguson last month, they have started to show the sort of form expected of them after relegation from the Championship.
Jones says he is ready to roll up his sleeves again.
“We knew on Saturday that Cheltenham wouldn’t make it easy for us and we go to Peterborough knowing it will be another really hard game,” he said.
“Their results have picked up recently and they have got a really good player up front in Jonson Clarke-Harris who we will have to look out for.
“They are a good team and the new manager has been in there a few weeks now, so they will be expecting to be up there.”
Wanderers will have to cope without an array of first teamers, the latest of which is the suspended Conor Bradley. Jones – who may well be displaced to right wing-back as a result – is confident the squad has sufficient depth.
“I think if we’d have suffered this sort of thing back in the League Two days we’d have struggled to put a team out,” he said. “Thankfully things are different these days and we have got a stronger squad. We’ll work hard and prepare in training and see what team is picked but we know whoever goes out there can get a result.”
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