FANS of Wigan Athletic read with disgust the articles written by Messrs Hince and Burton and took said pieces to be an insult to themselves and the club that they follow through thick and thin. Neil Barker has spent years covering Wigan Athletic and has gained a reputation for accurate, well balanced reporting and is well respected, not only by the fans, but by the club - the two pieces may have undone all his great work in one fell swoop.
Paul Hince titles his piece 'A town that doesn't want to know' - well I for one would like to invite him to spend a day with the people who don't want to know at a forthcoming game. Let him see for himself the passion and the camaraderie amongst Latics fans and then form an educated opinion rather than the one displayed for all to see in the now infamous piece that I personally feel was ill informed and for want of better words lazy journalism by a local newspaper who supposedly has the interest of its sporting clubs at heart.
The 'other' piece penned by James Burton was, I suppose, supposed to be constructive but failed miserably and was in fact another slap in the face and the same offer applies to him and perhaps he could share a taxi with his colleague Mr. Hince. I promise that we don't bite.
Rapid rise
Wigan Athletic are a team that only came into existance in 1932 and only entered the football league in 1978 and therefore haven't got the history that many other teams may have. The likes of Stoke City, Burnley and Preston have all historically been 'big' clubs in the past and generations have been brought up with this in mind, whereas Wigan Athletic have had little to boast about realistically and and up until the last few years have had rugby league rammed down their throats. This has now changed!
However even the most optimistic can't really expect Latics to double (or better) their crowds overnight purely because they have had a good run and are sitting proudly at the top of the First Division. Admittedly the attendance figures should be better but they are a vast, vast improvement on those that bothered turning up when Dave Whelan first bought the club in 1995. How many clubs can boast such an increase? Not many I can tell you.
The crowd at the Crystal Palace game was disappointing and should have been better but I suppose a combination of Sky TV and an early kick off doesn't exactly help matters. Our gate against Middlesbrough was considerably better than that of Bolton Wanderers the previous evening and even if you take away the decent away following it still eclipses the Reebok figure - do Bolton get slated?
As for Wigan being a rugby town. I challenge anyone to drive around the place and count how many of the townsfolk and their children are proudly wearing a Wigan Athletic shirt as opposed to the cherry and white of the 'other' team in town. Also check the back windows of the cars and vans in the town. There is an abundance of Wigan Athletic stickers, swinging kits and various other memorabilia shown off in a large percentage of the vehicles in an area that is supposedly biased towards the egg chasing squad.
The general feeling amongst fans of Wigan Athletic is that the media don't see us as a fashionable/saleable commodity and with a result like the one against Palace you can't fail to praise the side but then with the next breath you find the only thing to slap us back down again - crowds. Our average is not the worst in the division and will rise as we are still to play teams such as West Ham, Sunderland, Nottingham Forest and even Burnley (local derby) which will attract a sizeable crowd, with the West Ham game possibly pulling in a near full house.
Change takes time
It will not happen overnight, and perhaps it may not be happening as quickly as some may wish, but it will happen and Premier League status will undoubtedly attract the sleeping public of Wigan who cling to the fact they are a Manchester United/Liverpool/Everton or whatever fan despite the fact they have hardly ever watched their supposed idols live and in some cases never at all apart from on the box.
We have faith and I personally think the club are doing their best to promote the club to the town and their policy on child admission only goes to show that they are building for the future. You need to educate a generation.
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Hurrah Mr Heeley! A balanced viewpoint which hopefully will assuage to some extent the vitriol created by the Hince and Burton articles! Such a pity we always seem to be defending ourselves though...
Well said mr heeley,the comments made by two reporters are an insult to fans that go to the games through thick and thin.
Rome wasn`t built in a day etc but we are getting there.
At last - someone who's making sense! Its becoming boring listening to people who haven't a clue about the club or the people who support it. I'm sure we're just flavour of the month at the moment and no doubt Mr Hince will write another article about something else that he's totally clueless about very soon. Good to see all the latics fans making their point though!
After reading the mentioned article by Mr. Hince, i have had my suspicions confirmed, if anyone has picked up a national newspaper recently, and to some extent, the 'Preston' evening post, especially on a Monday, you will turn to the sports pages and most likely 9/10 times find a small column dedicated to the Wigan Athletic game the weekend before, now i challenge someone to go through these papers, and count how many of them will give an accurate report of the match, without being tempted to mention either:<br>
a) the rugby team<br>
or<br>
b) the attendances at the games<br>
it's really becoming too much of a cliche now where the papers are coming out with comments like '...in a hugely dedicated rugby town...' and '...was overshadowed by the lack of support....'<br>
A few weeks back, if i can recall, it was in The Daily Telegraph, there was an article about the Wigan game, and at the end of the article it gave (as it does in TDT) team details, formation, score, subs, ref, crowd..etc..<br>
Not once in the entire article did it mention one word about the game! However, it went on and on about how the rugby was still ruling and how the 'cherry and whites' where refusing to accept the latics.. I say that this guy came to wigan with no other intention than to make the gap between the rugby and football fans wider.. however, I did find something interesting...<br>
At the bottom of that very same page, where all the results from all the leagues, and it showed the Unibond Premier league, Burscough (bottom at the time) had beaten Alfreton Town (top at the time) but not only beat them, the score if i remember, was 4-1....<br>
now.... let's think about this....<br>
Wigan Warriors Vs Wakefield Trinity...<br>
You'd probably get 100/1 that wakefield would win that game, maybe more, now at Wigan, you have to go to at least a score of 6-0 to get 100/1 odds for a win, and also, not only would Wigan win, it would be a no contest, the wakefield players may as well not turn up for the game...<br>
Anything can happen in football! Most Rugby games are finished before they've begun...<br>