Wigan Warriors • Latics in administration - Lenagan leading bid
Ruddy Duck wrote:
When I first started supporting the club in the early seventies, Wigan was as big if not bigger than Warrington, but that is no longer the case today since Warrington found itself at the junction of the M6, M56 and M62 motorways and also at the crossroads of the West Coast and the Manchester to Liverpool railway lines which resulted in many more and bigger businesses moving into their town.
Even the Wigan based Shearings holiday travel company moved their garage from Bryn to Warrington and built a coach Interchange due to its motorway connnections around Warrington.
Since the Heinz factory was built, there has been not the same investment over the last few years from companies of a similar size into the Borough of Wigan.
Until the A5225 link road between Junction 5 of the M61 is connected to Junction 26 of the M6/M58, Wigan will never attract better investment as its internal road interstructure is so inferior with that of other local towns.
Like I have said, things are not the same and it is not just confined to the Warriors and the furture of the Stadium, but the future of the town.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here.
If you're saying that Wigan as a town is dying and we'd all better prepare for a bleak future ... okay, that's a POV, but it's not likely to happen in our lifetime (if it happens at all).
If you're saying that it's our club's inevitable future to be playing second-fiddle to Warrington, I'd argue that we've been hearing that for quite a while now. Warrington certainly have a wealthier owner than Wigan, but they have had for quite a few seasons and it still hasn't translated into a superior haul of silverware. On that score, excellence of management would seem to be a more important issue.
It seems to me that we have two causes for real uncertainty at present.
The stadium is one, but that's nobody's fault who's involved at Wigan now. Whether it was the right thing to let Whelan cement us to the football, or the wrong thing, or whether we had no choice in the matter for whatever reason, it's over and done with. Whelan's priority was always going to be Latics, but he'd probably have been able to run us successfully with his small change if it hadn't been for the salary cap. At least we currently have committed and level-headed owners who seem to be biding their time while the Latics/stadium debacle drags on, and if nothing else, are remaining calm and relaxed about the whole thing, which in its turn, is making me feel a lot more relaxed than I would be otherwise. (From what I'm hearing, though I'm no expert on this, now that the Spaniards have been outed as cowboys, things are looking quite a bit rosier for us on that front).
The bigger cause for concern for me is the second one, and that's the general state of the British game. Who knows who'll be left when Covid is finally over, but even without that, nothing I see and hear at the top of the game fills me with hope. While the NRL seems to go from strength to strength, despite the scourge of Covid, our game is once again welcoming the likes of Leigh back, and producing Twitter pundits who seem to think it unfair and boring that clubs like Wigan, Saints and Wire are dominating all competitions. What's the eventual outcome of that going to be? More stringent measures designed to make it harder for the top teams to win? Heaven forbid that the onus should be placed on the lesser clubs to try and get their own act together.
Statistics: Posted by Cruncher — Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:20 pm — Replies 887 — Views 81401