And ultimately that was the issue.
Myself/Conroy etc. Used to work closely with Wigan stadium safety people and through that we used to have contact with other grounds and their safety people.
Some were very accommodating and others not so much.
By sticking by the rules we were chipping away at what each would and wouldn't allow and along with that when clubs wouldn't allow things Wigan would back us.
For example for the 2011 semi final at Warrington against saints, Warrington wouldn't allow anything.
However believe it or not the RFL and the BBC supported us and asked Warrington to reconsider.
I went down to the ground 3 days before and worked with the safety people and found out what they would and wouldn't allow and we managed to agree and after the game they contacted me to praise everyone and thank us.

However as I say others wanted to go their own way and do things without seeking permission etc. I predicted it wouldn't work and I think most people will agree it's not been the same since even for those who have stepped forward in then last couple of years to try and work with the club and recreate it.

There was a lot of other work went on behind the scenes and I thought we had a good balance. We supported the club with certain things and they supported us.

We had 2 supporters nights with 100 + at each night and raised into the thousands which we split between the flag group and charity such as Wigan hospice and Macmillan nurses.
The club gave us season tickets to raffle and raise funds plus other things.
We had the merchandise selling well (300 pin badges and about 300 scarves were made and sold).

Bit of a shame, but as Brian potter said "can't go back".

Every away game now I see the same ultra faces and smoke bombs and things kicking off (I didn't post but I saw some stuff at saints away that wasn't pleasnt on both sides) and the same faces are always in the frame.

And thise would hide behind anything organised now so that's why I wouldn't do it again.

I used to have a different username but the December 2001 join date for the oldest members isn't correct. That date, which is the same for the first 1,000 or so users, was just when the site was resurrected after its first major catastrophic server failure (or whatever happened) so all posters with that date will have actually been around longer. All the post counts got reset then as well.

The actual start was August 2000ish, and I remember the first big thing was the 2000 World Cup.

(see rl was by far the most prolific poster in the early days and would work his way around every single club board winding folk up. But everyone knew he was doing it and it was all very tongue in cheek. Although there could be some massive bust ups, because there were only maybe around 20 really regular posters it didn't get too crazy. Raffy and Bigs from the Wire were probably the most annoying.

I think DaveO was posting on here from a cave wasnt he? There was nobody else on here to read his posts but then again, nobody reads them now

December 2003.