I think it's a shame that certain drunken idiots have ruined the reputation of a group who originally did a brilliant thing.

I loved it. All the flags looked brilliant. The world club challenge looked amazing on tv ( I had to watch it abroad) but the massive flag's that where waved and the atmosphere they created looked electric.

Same goes for the playoff match at Widnes in 2011 against Saint's. It was a brilliant atmosphere despite losing.


Now unfortunately the wrong people have gotten involved and ruined it with wearing balaclava's and scarves round their faces, putting stickers anywhere they possibly can and just generally being over the top.

There's no excuse for going around a town vandalising the place by putting "brigante's" stickers anywhere they see fit. I saw a pic yesterday on twitter of a lad who had even got one of the "ultra" emblems tattooed on his arm. and then a group photo of them all balaclavad up in a pub giving it the big I am.

I think the problem is worse away from home because the group are spending all their time getting tanked up on ale which they can't handle, and then it just escalates.

They where warned that going down the ultra route would be a bad choice, and it would seem it is now showing.

Rugby league is not European football. It has a totally different culture.

The problem with this business of putting scarves across your face/setting off flares/smoke bombs is its young lads trying to recreate what they have seen on TV in European football matches. When you go to Europe and watch football yes sometimes this does have a crackling atmosphere, with an undercurrent of tension that these are quite nasty people often involved in far right wing groups that fight for white racial purity, so when you go there as an English tourist you kind of think, well this is certainly an experience to talk about when I get home, but I wouldn't particularly want it at home matches...

Now aside from casting any judgement on whether its appropriate to be copying something with undercurrents of right wing racial hooliganism, even if you just want to recreate that atmosphere, you can't recreate that over here. One, being a working class sport, right wingers and skin heads have never been able to get a foothold in it especially as in France the Nazis banned RL....they would never be welcome. Two, the audiences are mainly families, in European football it is mostly males and they don't go with girlfriends/wives or especially kids, as a general rule, they go with their mates. This is especially true in places like Turkey, Eastern Europe where you get the real 'atmosphere'.

So if you get together a handful of English young lads, that aren't real authentic hard right wing skinheads, but are just pretending to be like that to look a bit notorious, and experimenting with smoke bombs and stuff, it just looks totally cringeworthy. Not only is it disruptive but its not even scary, we all know they aren't really hard, they are just knobs.

This isn't a post against Wigan as I am agreeing with most of the Wigan fans on here and the Warrington chavs get on my nerves too. With us we had a similar situation to the Brigantes business of young chavs spoiling good efforts from older supporters to try and encourage good atmosphere with the 'barmy army'. You would get a lot of hangers on around Geordie (who did a lot for the club) and his drum, wanting to be seen as 'hardcore fans' and then acting like idiots being offensive to other clubs fans etc.

Could the reason the group are more out of control at away games, simply be down to cause and effect.

If you get out of control at an away ground, the worst case senario is that you will be ejected.

If they got as out of control at the Wigan ground, the club would ban them and so stop their access.

Each away match is like an individual event with no long lasting impact on their activities.

come off it... more like 2000.

shame it was on a saturday would of been a fair few more if it was sunday

Officials from the Wigan club are travelling over to Huddersfield today to meet with Police & safety reps of the Giants to review CCTV footage of the incident in respect of further action to identify, and take action against, anyone involved.

That was 2000 Latics well that's what they said on TV

They'd sold more than that when I got my ticket on friday and it was pay on the gate, so there were a lot more!

Good news. Get the little scrotes kicked out of all RL games.

The 'Brigantes' have always been an embarrassment to the Wigan club and Rugby League in general.

Wasn't it one of these muppets who battered a St Helens steward behind the Eddington end at Knowsley Road during the last derby there?

If anyone has any information/names of people involved in what happened on Saturday then please let the club know. I believe they are very keen to find out who the instigators were and hand out some lengthy bans.

I think Saturday was the first time I haven't stayed behind and clapped the players off the pitch as I wanted to get away from the smoke/fighting. Behavior like this isn't something we want associated with our club/sport.