Long may our town have sports teams competing at the top of their respective games, we still have a Premier League football team and not only a Super League team but Super League Champions. Tremendous for the town.

Agreed. I think that there is more than one or two that bad mouth the rugby. I remember years ago, before they got in the prem, going to a latics match and hearing the chants of "if you hate Wigan rugby clap your hands", but then we sing "fu** the latics" in one of our songs, so it's a bot pot/kettle for us to say we hate them for saying nasty things about us

Some Latics fans are good blokes, infact, the majority of them are good people. There are a minority who a knuckle dragging idiots, which to be fair, we have as well. Such as the 2 guys I was stood next to at bradford who spent the whole time hurling abuse at Josh Charnley for little to no reason. The Latics fans I know - season ticket holders who claim to have been going since the Springfield days, know of the animosity, and possibly even feel some of that animosity themselves, but when we speak about the situation they see there are 2 sides to this story and there's no point to us hating each other. The town is plenty big enough for the both of us.

OMG i'm agreeing with him again... To stay up with the resourses thay have is an achievement.

What an excellent post. I do not like football, much I'm pretty indifferent to latics. If they stay up or go down I don't care, but that's more to with disliking football than the club. What I don't like is the minority of their fans apparently all of which congregate on the cockney latic site; they're pretty disgraceful, even if the were RL fans (or fans of anything) I would still see the same.

Hats off to Whelan & Co for keeping them up this long, fewer resources than almost every club in the PL but manage to survive season after season. However, its a tight-rope being near the bottom every season, you can only survive so long without going down. What happens when Whelan quits the club, ive been told he already wants to sell, they wouldnt be afloat if it wasnt for the investment that has been put in by Whelan, and continue to post losses which would be worrying as a Latics fan.

I'd personally like Latics to stay up indefinetly, but many of their fans are an embarrasment to say the least with a massive chip on their shoulders towards anything WRL, although some fans on here seem to have caught the same condition though which is sad.



Yeh i agree, sporting achievements have put Wigan back on the map, literally.

For fecks sake is this still going?

Thing is, as Lenegan has proved, Whelan isnt the best at running a club anyway so isnt there grounds for saying that, if they get the right person, Wigan Athletic could end up a real force in the future and if they get the right person and the right people then maybe theres a chance they could sort the animosity out for example "20% off if you have a WRLFC" season ticket" etc. Im not from Wigan and I don't support a necessarily local team but I can understand the frustrations of the real fans of both that just want them all to get along for the sake of the town.

Too late now, could have worked if they offered it when we both moved into the JJB, who knows. Are lots of RL fans really intested in watching 20 or so football matches a season though? Im not so sure.

I wouldn't assume all the 1500 of days gone old are "proper" fans, I've said it before and will no doubt say it again, I enjoyed the journey to the Premier League far more than the time spent there. Circumstances change and some us go less now than we did then and arguably talk with more knowledge about the likes of Campbell, Griffiths, Adkins, Skipper and Tankard than any of the current crop.

Glory hunters will of course jump on any bandwagon, but if clubs want to attract more fans were else do they turn? I often wonder for example how many fans we pull in from places like Leigh who have there own side, or people choose us over other rugby alternatives that may be closer to were the actually live, and frankly does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? From a selfish point of view, I'd rather see the sold out signs go up than get snotty about were people come from - that said I don't get the whole "changing teams" melarky in any sport, but each to there own!

I very much get the point put across by others than its odd to celebrate mediocrity, but then I guess its more the battle against adversity, its quiet an achievement on relatively modest budgets etc etc to be staying up for a 7th season.

That said, I do find it funny how the press build up survival as a £40 million game or the initial promotion from the Championship as a £90 million "boost" for the club when all that plus a bit more fly's out in wages.

For those that get annoyed by the likes of Cockney Latic, its easily avoided I've managed to for a good few years now!

Once upon a time, we used to only get 4-5000. Are you saying the extra 10,000 that showed up in the mid-80s were not "real" fans? Are the extra 5,000 fans we get now compared to 8 years ago not "real" fans?

Our club captain seems quite happy that Latics stayed up

To be fair, how many of those 'extra' fans used to support Leyth or St Helens? It's not really a fair comparison.

Whelan is good at running a club, he just lost interest in us when Latics were on the way up, backed up by Maurice who was well past his sell by. He misread the situation, believing that rugby fans would flock to see a high flying football team, when in fact our gates have increased significantly during Latics' time in the prem.