Volunteer snow movers at the Reebok!

Community spirit or the biggest piss take of the season? Bolton Wanderers Football club asked for their supporters help to shift the snow around the Reebok Stadium in order to make the area safe in time for the FA Cup fourth round tie with Everton.

Did they offer free tickets or free shirts? Maybe a Club Shop Voucher for a fiver? Ok then - a free hot drink? No! Did they heck-as-like. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that the club were asking for volunteers to give up their own time and put in a back breaking shift before being rewarded with the pleasure of spending £20 of their own 'hard earned' to get into the ground for the match!

Bolton Wanderers, meanwhile, have the highest paid manager and players in the division sat snugly inside in the players' lounge eating free hot soup and pasta. Zat Knight is on a reported figure of £15,000.00 PER WEEK (over two grand a day) and yet the club can't offer a few miserly pence to those willing to brave the cold and ice after the heaviest overnight snowfall in years.

Can they not afford to get a few temps in for a couple of hours or get some extra stewards on the job? Personally I just think it is pure cheek on the part of the club to get the fans to do the dirty work. It's not as though we didn't all know the snow was on it's way. On Tuesday my weather report said HEAVY SNOW, Friday, 4pm til after midnight. So they had plenty of advance notice. It's also not as though we are a tiny club like Daisy Hill or Marine or even Bury who you could probably forgive and understand a last minute cry for help.

All those fans who turned up early today to clear the snow should be Knighted. Zat Knighted. He should turn up to each person's house with a thank you letter and a crisp fifty. It's fans like this that keep players like him on wages like his*.

I did not go to the Reebok early to lend my support for the pre match winter piss take and I do not know whether the club took pity in the end and bought everyone an overpriced roll over hot dog. I also don't know if the players really were inside eating soup. But what I do know is that I found the very notion of the club asking the fans to get stuck in was all kinds of wrong considering the size and financial clout of their business.

No matter how much I wanted a Big Mac you certainly wouldn't find me clearing the drive-through with my own shovel before I could order one and I think the same principle applies here.

*I don't want to be one of the fans who turns up to help out and reinforce our position as the lowly supporter whilst keeping the players on their Royal, out of reach, millionaire perches. To anyone who turned up today to help out, you should not have bothered. Helping out will only serve to cause the club to take us more and more for granted. It would have been a far stronger message for all fans to give them a big 'up yours'!

Only in football could this happen.

Why couldn't the players clear the pitch? If not the first team, what about the reserves and "rested" players?

As I've said on another thread, if you went to any other entertainment venue and they asked you to clear snow from the car park before charging you to get in, you'd say a big FUCK OFF.

It's a fucking disgrace that the club didn't give the volunteers anything in return for their efforts. I don't know how they had the nerve to ask fans to bring shovels.

With the amount of empty seats we had in the stadium i'm sure the club could have offered them a ticket or a signed shirt.

The whole thing just fucking stinks.

the last time they did it, they got offerd free tickets, i know because i was there.

If this is true, its a fucking joke and something i would happily boycott future matches over!

They charged the volunteers £5 for "Shovel Storage" so they could watch the match without a shovel on the seat next to them.

Swindon Town manager Paolo Di Canio rewarded volunteers who helped Saturday's match against Shrewsbury go ahead by buying them all pizza.

The County Ground pitch was covered by snow on Friday afternoon and the club appealed for helpers to clear it.

Around 200 people, including Di Canio and his staff, worked to remove the snow and the game went ahead.

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I wonder if Dougie brought his shovel to work yesterday?

I'm starting to hate BWFC, all we appoint/sign are tossers.

So people volunteer for something then complain when they don't get anything for it. They should have looked up volunteer in the dictionary before they started.

On the subject of pompous twats Gartside DID in fact help out clearing the snow!

Do we know for sure no freebies were offered?

I don't know - I wasn't there. Personally I think that people who can and want to do it are great.

wanderlust wrote:I don't know - I wasn't there. Personally I think that people who can and want to do it are great.

Some people need to look up the meaning of volunteer. Well done to those who turned out.

NickFazer wrote:

Some people need to look up the meaning of volunteer. Well done to those who turned out.

Look Fazer, stop trying to be clever. Those volunteers are too dumb to realise they are being exploited.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

NickFazer wrote:

Some people need to look up the meaning of volunteer. Well done to those who turned out.

Look Fazer, stop trying to be clever. Those volunteers are too dumb to realise they are being exploited.

I doubt it, maybe they are a little naive if they thought the club was going to offer them anything in return without saying anything beforehand. They are dumb if their motive was to get a reward and repeating the exercise next time it snows for a couple of hours.

If you read the article it doesn't no freebies were given out, it says they asked for help but without saying they would give anything in return. I thought it was wrong of a multi million pound business to ask the little people (who pay to come every week) to help out for free to get the game on. It's their company and it's exploitative of their position to get the fans to clear up for free.

I don't know what the big fuss is about, if people love the club enough to volunteer and help out then that's up to them. I don't know about any of you, but when I help someone out, I don't do it because I expect something back, I do it because it brings me satisfaction knowing I've helped out.