Rugby League Season 2023

[Deleted member 77198]

Wigan is a rugby town and always will be . It’s true what from what I have seen about that none of the rugby fans support latics . Warriors fans want their own stadium and set up and it is interesting how new owner Danson has been very pro active since he took over and put a lot of his cash into the franchise. Danson rugby league through and through and has made some interesting comments recently.
As a lifelong city fan living in Wigan the last decade can I add anyone remembering that midweek FA cup tie a few years back at the DW . A sell out which we somehow got beat 1 nil and the violence after the game . 80% of the Latics fan base that night was made of dippers and rag feral plastics and the police just let them do what they wanted . Outside the ground possibly the worst violence I have ever witnessed as city fans tried to make their way back to the train stations and got lost . Aguero also got assaulted on the pitch . Just about sums up Latics none existent football fan base that night . Don’t know how I didn’t get arrested that night either, Mancunian street wise is a fabulous lifelong skill set learnt from the 80s haha ;-)

Me and my Father went to that Wigan FA Cup tie that night and he said it was like going back to his heyday watching City in the 70s and 80s. The worst he’s seen since that era. I quite enjoyed it outside the ground at the end, it made up for getting beat, City fans were well up for it in the face of a load of goading Pies.

I’m not sure about them being Dipper and Rag plastics though because I’ve always found the split in Wigan tends to go:
Wigan rugby fans - either hate footy or support one of the four Manchester+Liverpool footy teams,
Latics fans - on their own, just support Latics in footy, hate rugby or maybe take a passing interest in anyone who are playing Wigan in rugby or say union is better than league.

That’s only my experience from going out with a Wigan girl for two years and spending a small amount of time in the town on nights out or seeing her family. Maybe others from the town would know more though.

Personally, I don’t like either club. Whenever the FA Cup draw comes around I always say, ‘anyone but Wigan and Boro!’. But I do find their rivalry fascinating.

Would be good if Wigan rugby got their own stadium.

 

[Stephen230]

Everyone always says Wigan is a rugby town. Always has been, always will be.

But it’s easier to be more popular when you’re one of the best team’s in the country and you’re comparing to a semi pro non league side, as the football team were for half of their existence and a non top tier team for all but eight years.

I’d be interested to see a comparison between the two team’s attendances during the short period they were both in the top tier. Wouldn’t surprise me if the football team weren’t averaging higher crowds.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Everyone always says Wigan is a rugby town. Always has been, always will be.

But it’s easier to be more popular when you’re one of the best team’s in the country and you’re comparing to a semi pro non league side, as the football team were for half of their existence and a non top tier team for all but eight years.

I’d be interested to see a comparison between the two team’s attendances during the short period they were both in the top tier. Wouldn’t surprise me if the football team weren’t averaging higher crowds.

When Wigan Athletic were in the Prem their average attendance across those 8 seasons was 18,621.

Wigan RLFC’s average across the same 8 years was 15,187.

However, more away fans would attend the football matches than rugby. So I bet the attendances of the home supports were very similar.

The most recent seasons see both sets of fans attending less with the footy team attracting an average of 10,397 and the rugby 12,278.

 

[Gundoggin]

Me and my Father went to that Wigan FA Cup tie that night and he said it was like going back to his heyday watching City in the 70s and 80s. The worst he’s seen since that era. I quite enjoyed it outside the ground at the end, it made up for getting beat, City fans were well up for it in the face of a load of goading Pies.

I’m not sure about them being Dipper and Rag plastics though because I’ve always found the split in Wigan tends to go:
Wigan rugby fans - either hate footy or support one of the four Manchester+Liverpool footy teams,
Latics fans - on their own, just support Latics in footy, hate rugby or maybe take a passing interest in anyone who are playing Wigan in rugby or say union is better than league.

That’s only my experience from going out with a Wigan girl for two years and spending a small amount of time in the town on nights out or seeing her family. Maybe others from the town would know more though.

Personally, I don’t like either club. Whenever the FA Cup draw comes around I always say, ‘anyone but Wigan and Boro!’. But I do find their rivalry fascinating.

Would be good if Wigan rugby got their own stadium.

Most pubs in wigan on a premier league weekend or latterly Champions League nights are full of plastic bin dippers . My local village / bar club is , it took nearly 5 years for the inbred cunts to accept me . Not that I provoked them at at any stage or anything ! ;-) Had a few close encounters over the years but never came to blows , all good now and the plastics have gone all shy bless ‘em .

CTID

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Another place where there’s a rivalry between the rugby and football teams is Bradford. But it’s nothing like the deep rooted hatred is in Wigan.

Did you know that Bradford City AFC (yes, the football club) were once crowned champions in rugby league?

Bradford City were once called Mannigham FC and were a rugby league club who played at Valley Parade. After Rugby League (then called the Northern Rugby Football Union) split from Rugby Union in 1895, Manningham won the first ever league title in 1895-96.

But then in 1903, Mannigham switched codes to association football and became Bradford City AFC (but were actually the same club).

There’s a bit of banter around that between Bradford City and Bradford Northern/Bulls fans, with City fans saying they won a league title in rugby before Northern/Bulls ever did. Some rugby fans even declined to watch Bradford Bulls at Valley Parade when they played there in 2001 and 2002 when Odsal was was getting refurbished.


Another place where rugby and football seemed to be ‘one-or-the-other’ was Manchester.

I once went to one of Gary James’ talks/lectures at Central Library about early rugby and football clubs in Manchester and what is now Greater Manchester. He said, that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Manchester was a rugby city more than it was a football city.

All the initial football clubs in Manchester had less interest around them than the rugby clubs in the region. Even with the more citywide encompassing creation of a Manchester named club in Manchester City in 1894 didn’t really change that.

This was because Manchester and it’s surrounding region (what later became Greater Manchester: clubs from Manchester, Salford, Ashton, Stockport, Oldham, Stretford etc.) weren’t well connected to and didn’t like to be aligned with the other Lancashire clubs further North like Blackburn, Preston, Burnley, Blackpool etc.
Manchester football clubs and the Manchester FA were actually influenced more by and alligned themselves to the Sheffield football clubs, rather than those Lancashire football clubs and the Lancashire FA, due to the train line that was built from Sheffield to Manchester. And you see the first football clubs in our region were aligned to the train line from Sheffield like Glossop North End, Newton Heath and the Gorton and Ardwick clubs and the biggest clubs in the region were in the East of the city like Hurst.

So, as City fans, we have a lot to thank Sheffield United and Wednesday for us having our club to support. And why I always think the Red Rose of Lancaster on our badge is a misnomer (or whatever the visual name of that is).

But still, at this time, rugby in the Manchester region (what became much of Greater Manchester) was more popular.

That all changed with City’s FA Cup win in 1904 and then United’s (with City’s players) two league title and one FA Cup wins between 1908-11. And after that decade, Manchester became a football city in what seemed to be a football v rugby, ‘either/or’, switch. With interest in rugby waning in Manchester.

Which is a shame as I would always have liked a Manchester rugby league team to support. As a Mancunian City fan kid who also loved rugby league but could never get on board with the ‘Reds’/‘Red Devils’ thing at Salford+United, I didn't have a club to support.
And it’s a damn shame that the RFL declined Manchester Rangers’ application for a Championship 2 place in favour of Toronto which saw Manchester’s backers take their investment away and Rangers just folded. I think a rugby league club would be great for Manchester.

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Did Tom Brady assist that Ritson try. Saints are too good without that level of help from the officials. The forward pass was very obvious.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Did Tim Brady assist that Ritson try. Saints are too good without that level of help from the officials. The forward pass was very obvious.

Both wide tries looked to be forward to me - one each.

This has turned into an absolute mess of a game.

Walters is huge - every week there seems to be "he's joining Wigan next season" player, they'll have loads of players at this rate!

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Both wide tries looked to be forward to me - one each.

This has turned into an absolute mess of a game.

Walters is huge - every week there seems to be "he's joining Wigan next season" player, they'll have loads of players at this rate!

Yes I’m gutted about Walters joining Wigan. We didn’t give him enough game time in the first half of the season and Wigan made Sam a better offer

 

[MillionMilesAway]

This is getting more and more random from the ref.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

That bloody referee had an absolute shocker tonight. Wrong and inconsistent decisions all over the shop going both ways.

Needs to get his head out of his arse, he lost it up there when he was trending on Twitter after the Grand Final when there was that clip of him talking to the two captains.