Great afternoon yesterday at the HJ Stadium with some past players on their annual dinner.
Maybe some of our lets say older viewers will remember some of the players in attendance,
Derek Whithead,
Tony Barrow,
Ken Kelly,
Bob Eccles,
Alex Murphy,
Bobby Wanbon,
Dave Chisnall,
Derek Finnigan,
John Fieldhouse,
Mike Nic, to name just a few,another couple were inducted into the hall of fame,Ronnie Duanne,Tommy Martyn a great afternoon if any of you can get along to one of these dinners it is well worth it.

Mc was Grahame Lovett guest speaker was Billy Thompson (Ex Ref) some fantastic stories from that man comedian was Ged Stone one to look out for to round the day off had a great chat with Andy Gregory in the rodney over a pint ,Great day all around.

Don't get me started on Billy ******* Thompson

Not really a fan of the Wire was he, specifically remember the dissalowed try against Hull Cup quater in 80s.

well, i was refering to the forward pass (which wasn't) to phil ford.

there was a kick to phil fords wing which a hull player made a play for and fordy picked it up and scooted under the posts at the fletcher end.bt dis-allowed it for off side..thats the one which sticks out for me

My memory may be playing tricks with me. It was a try that deflected off a Hull player that Ford scored in the Fletcher end. Just consulted one of my books and must have forgotten but it states 'the game ended in controversial 10-4 defeat. Warrington were the better side but the ref dissalowed four tries'

The days before the video ref eh

Those were the days when thankfully there was no Health & Safety and Wilderspool used to literally rock and rumble with the atmosphere and noise ....

Yes, that particular day Thompson had a real shocker, though I think that was his usual standard when reffing us!!....I honestly think him and Fred Lindop had a private duel to see who could screw us the most!!...

To be fare a lot of his stories were about Warrington and Wilderspool..

He said has he run up the steps one night to enter the field some eld chap Shouts,
"oi Thompson who are you gonna send off tonite"
To which he replied "who the bloody hell do you want me to".

All the above, just goes to emphasise my point about some of our younger posters, whinging about who's going to be reffing our next game....you don't know you're born (that makes me sound old).

Thompson must have got a hellofa Christmas hamper off Hull, that day. That was a disgrace

Whats Russel Smith upto nowadays?

Thanking the Wigan board, for their more than generous gift from 1994

Smith was brilliant compared to Lindop and Thompson. They (along with Kershaw) were the worst referees the game has seen imo. Thompson gave us nothing for years. Remember one game at the Watershedings when he disallowed three Warrington tries and we still only lost by 3. He decided before the old bugger ran out who was going to get the points.

Played in a Competition promoting Rugby League in Holland in the 80`s, there were
teams from Holland,Germany,France & Britain competing.The night before the comp, we were confined to the Hotel under a strict "no drinking" order by our coach, needless to say after dark it was like escape from Alkatraz, first out of the hotel window en-route to the bars in Papendrecht, was one of our other coaches Roy Campbell, (older Wire fans might remember him), me and a couple other players tagged along with him till guilt took over, (and the ale) and we returned to the hotel. Before going back to bed i ended up chatting to a young lady who had come along to watch the comp in the hotel bar. We ended up back in my room with a number of other players and their girlfriends, carrying on having a laugh/few drinks etc...Dont ask me how, (cant remember), but in the early hours it all erupted in to a mass "shaving foam fight" and was all quite noisy and boisterous. Next there was a knock at the door, when i opened it, who was stood there but good auld Fred Lindop in nothing but a dirty pair of white "Y" fronts, string vest with a huge amount of cotton wool sticking out of each ear!! There was a second or two of complete silence from me, while i tried to take in what was in front of me, Fred Lindop dressed like Rab C Nesbit pleading for a bit of peace and quiet, then i did what many Wire fans of that era would`ve loved to do, hit him square in the face with a paper plate filled with shaving foam and shut the door.
We made it to the semi final and were favourites to win the comp..... Until we saw who the ref was for the semi and he fegkcin crucified us.....But christ it was worth it... Lol.

Works for the NRL, he was a video referee at the weekend. He also steals candy from babies and is mean to puppies.*

*that bit isn't true, as far as I know.