Blackburn Rovers fanzine, 4000 Holes, is back. This follows a four year dormant period.
The fanzine started in 1989 when Rovers fans, mainly at Brockhall and Calderstones mental hospitals, set up the publication. In its early beginnings Rovers were struggling financially and FTH even coughed up its own money and sponsored at least one match. But it wasn’t long before things changed radically at Rovers when a certain Jack Walker decided to get involved.
Most football fanzines were a thorn in the side to many clubs, but not 4000 Holes! Instead of slagging off the club’s directors and campaigning for change, our fanzine became a purveyor of humour and positivity. After all, what did we have to complain about during those heady days? This was like a dream come true for most of us.
When this fanzine started, they must have had a lot of material sent to them. When I bought my first issue, its seller asked me to write articles and send copy to them. He asked everybody else who brought a copy from him that day to follow suit. By the time I wrote my first article for them, around a year later, FTH had already reached issue number 13. In my case, they received a couple of submissions and published both of them in this issue – unlucky for some!
For nearly 25 years the fanzine came out regularly, though not on a similar kind of scale as when it first started. As is usually the case, publication and writing of FTH eventually became the domain of a few writers and backroom staff. Fortunately it was in Brendan Searson’s safe pair of hands. His dogged determination made sure our fanzine came out on a regular basis each season. For many years Brendan could be seen with his boys standing on the River Darwen bridge, next to the Aqueduct pub, selling fanzine issues whenever it came out.
Brendan eventually retired and passed his baton on to journalist Danny Clough and the fanzine carried on. Unfortunately technical and other problems began to occur and a four year period of dormancy followed.
Now 4000 Holes fanzine has returned. Freelance journalist, Scott Sumner, is at its helm. During these turbulent times at Blackburn Rovers, it is nice to see a part of our culture, like the cover of this latest issue, come back from the dead. Hopefully we might be able to say something similar about our football club one day.
