Warriors have bought some land for a new ground ?

Perhaps Wigan Atheltic aren’t the first choice viewing of most football fans, but they are on Sky Sports at least once a season and that is the point. The Warriors’ rent is small potatoes. It covers one average player’s salary for three months.

The agreement Whelan made with Wigan RL is more of a PR move than a money spinner. It ensures he’s not public enemy number one with the RL crowd, and they may still buy his DW wares and use his facilities/gyms.

Rogues Gallery, you said the sale of Central Park went towards the DW, I’m sure that it was under Jack Robinson’s leadership that the ground was sold, and the money was used to pay off debts. If memory serves me well, Wigan RL were on the verge of playing at the Reebok until Whelan stepped in.[/quote]

dont talk rubbish ,he had no choice in the matter. planning permission was granted on the basis it was a dual sport stadium and you are barely the choice of football fans in wigan :lol:

If he had no choice, why do Wigan RL pay rent? Would you pay to use something you were legally entitled to use anyway? It was granted permission as a dual sport stadium, not a football/rugby league stadium. Had Orrell RU attracted the support Whelan hoped they would, they would have been the ones to use the stadium as RU is a national sport and open to much greater exposure than RL.

That aside, do you honestly think Wigan Athletic would be refused permission to use the stadium these days if Wigan RL were not allowed to play there?

There may be more Man U, Liverpool, Everton etc ‘supporters’ in Wigan than Latics supporters, but what do you expect for a team that only entered the football league in 1978?

And please don’t add little laughing faces to the end of posts in future and expect a sensible reply. It just suggests that you are very young and/or childish.

What really happened.

he Sale of Central Park

The introduction and move to summer rugby in 1996 saw Wigan become emerged in financial difficulty. They had built up debts of £3 million and the clubs board members decided the answer to the financial problems was to sell Central Park.

Local Businessman Dave Whelan, owner of Wigan Athletic Football Club, wanted to buy Central Park and have Latics share the ground with the Warriors. He offered £4.5m for the ground and pledged to spend a further £12.5m to turn it into a 20,000 all seater stadium for both clubs. Shareholders had voted for the idea but the Wigan board had another offer to consider from the Tesco Supermarket chain, which was rumoured to be closer to £10 million. If the Tesco offer was accepted, Wigan would be homeless. The idea was that Wigan would share with Bolton Wanderers new Reebok Stadium, which at the time was being built.

Central Park was the historic home of Wigan Rugby League and the fans were outraged at the suggestion of Wigan moving four miles out of town to Bolton’s Reebok Stadium.

In late February 1997 news emerged that Wigan were holding talks with Bolton about a ground share. Dave Whelan responded to the news by offering to virtually wipe out the club’s debts within 48 hours. In early March Tesco increased their offer to buy Central Park to £12.5 million and news broke that the ground sale was to “go-ahead”. Fans held a protest outside Central Park ahead of a pre season friendly against Castleford whilst other fans chose to boycott the game. Some fans even travelled down to Tesco Headquarters and protested there! The Wigan fans simply did not want the club to move to Bolton, even if it was for a temporary period. They could not believe the board could sell the ground without a permanent new home being in place.

The Wigan board was made up of four people, Jack Robinson, Arthur Thomas, Tom Rathbone and John Martin. They had a vote over Whelan’s offer and Martin, who ran the Riverside Club at Central Park, was the only member of the board who voted for it. The other three voted against as they were holding out for an increased offer from Tesco and thus seeing us move out of the town to Bolton. Following the vote Martin resigned has he had become frustrated by the board’s apparent lack of urgency to agree the Whelan plan despite shareholders voting in favour of the move.

As the month wore on over 200 disgruntled shareholders met to discuss the controversial decision to sell Central Park to Tesco. They also backed a petition calling for the removal of chairman Jack Robinson and Mick Rathbone from the board immediately.

Into May 1997 and shareholders had decided they wanted to oust Jack Robinson as chairman. A shareholders action group claimed the board sold Central Park to Tesco without consultation after previously agreeing to accept a rescue package from millionaire Dave Whelan. Former player Phil Clarke was offered to the shareholders as the man to lead the ousting bid. The group’s next move will be a circular to the club’s 1500 shareholders seeking support for their attempt to remove Mr Robinson and his vice-chairman Tom Rathbone at an Emergency General Meeting on May 20.

A week before the shareholders EGM, Wigan unveil details of a proposed new super stadium. But critics of the board fear that if the team moves out of town to Bolton Wanderers’ new stadium at Horwich they will never return to Wigan. Robinson had met the shareholders’ action group that week but their spokesman Ernie Benbow said at the time that “he was unable to give any categorical assurances about a site in Wigan.”

At the same time Dave Whelan unveiled plans to build a new 25,000 seater stadium for Wigan Athletic at Robin Park but he refused to open ground share negotiations with the Wigan board after the collapse of his Central Park rescue package earlier this year.

On 20th May Wigan shareholders held the EGM and Jack Robinson survived, for now. Robinson won a vote of confidence 484 to 400 while fellow board member, Rathbone held on by 489 to 407. So Robinson was still chairman but Wigan were still homeless. The wrangling was far from over.

June 1997 saw the Wigan team embark on month long trip down under for the World Club Challenge. The trip had quietened the ground move saga but as they returned Jack Robinson faced a new vote of confidence from the shareholders. A newspaper reported that an associate gathered proxy votes for the original EGM in May by fraudulent methods. The paper claimed someone was instructed to fill in forms for shareholders who were believed to have died so they could be used as votes in favour of the two Wigan directors. Robinson reacted by saying “(The claims) are totally untruthful. This is just part of a smear campaign which has been going on by a certain group of people who want me out of the club.”

On August 19th 1997 Jack Robinson and Tom Rathbone resigned from the Wigan board. Then Wigan Coach Eric Hughes revealed that the pair had their homes damaged and their lives threatened. Following the resignations the Rugby Football League’s financial department were called in by the club to investigate its cash flow position. Arthur Thomas was the only remaining board member left so it was he who became temporary chairman. With Robinson gone John Martin, who earlier had resigned from the board, offered to ease the club’s financial problems with a 750,000 interest free loan. But the offer was conditional on the Warriors staying in Wigan and rejecting a temporary move to Bolton. He made the offer to bide the club time to negotiate a deal to move to proposed Robin Park stadium with Wigan Athletic on a permanent basis.”

It was finally announced on October 29th 1997 that Wigan would not be moving to the Reebok Stadium. Mike Nolan, who owned finance and car leasing businesses in Wigan, took over as chairman of the club from Arthur Thomas. He was joined on the board by John Martin who returned after his row with the old regime. Tesco agreed to let the Warriors stay on at Central Park until the end of 1999, when they would then join up with Wigan Athletic at there new stadium which was about to be built Robin Park.

If he had no choice, why do Wigan RL pay rent? Would you pay to use something you were legally entitled to use anyway? It was granted permission as a dual sport stadium, not a football/rugby league stadium. Had Orrell RU attracted the support Whelan hoped they would, they would have been the ones to use the stadium as RU is a national sport and open to much greater exposure than RL.

That aside, do you honestly think Wigan Athletic would be refused permission to use the stadium these days if Wigan RL were not allowed to play there?

There may be more Man U, Liverpool, Everton etc ‘supporters’ in Wigan than Latics supporters, but what do you expect for a team that only entered the football league in 1978?

And please don’t add little laughing faces to the end of posts in future and expect a sensible reply. It just suggests that you are very young and/or childish.[/quote]

im legally entitled to live in my own house even though through the mortgage system i am effectively paying rent untill the loan is payed

i would assume we pay rent as whelan has a controlling share in the stadium ?

a previous post of yours mentioned us being at the dw a good will gesture ??? make your mind up ffs

given the choice , who would whelan have on board , a 2nd rate team in ru that has 6 men and a dog watching them or the biggest name in rl with all the history ?

no brainer

Although Griff has allured to you being a no brainer, I will give you the benefit of the doubt, as without a brain your fingers and indeed the rest of your body would be inoperable, and therefore unable to work a keyboard.

However, presuming Griff is indeed correct, let me spell it all out in simplistic terms (ask your carer to explain if you wish, as this is a long post with no pictures):

Whelan buys Wigan Athletic.

Whelan plans to build a stadium for Wigan Athletic because he has ambitions for the club.

Rugby Union is a much bigger sport than Rugby League. More people in more countries watch and play it. It is a headline sport, not page four from the back of a national publication.

Orrell RU have recently finished second to Bath, Whelan sees potential for marketing JJB on nationally, and internationally viewed televised games. There is no assumption that Orrell will fill the JJB stadium, merely attract crowds larger than Edge Hall Road can accommodate when they play Bath, Wasps, Harlequins, etc. The marketing potential for JJB stores is too good to resist.

Wigan RL are on the verge of becoming homeless, so Whelan offers them a lifeline. He now has control of all three major sporting teams in Wigan.

Orrell don’t attract the support, TV or player interest envisaged and drop like a stone. Whelan ditches them keeping just Wigan Athletic and Wigan RL at the stadium.

Wigan Athletic reach the Premier League, and their games are now watched by millions on TV worldwide (even if it is to watch the opposition team). TV income is substantial and the piggyback marketing for JJB is priceless.

Rugby League has become, literally, the poor relation to Rugby Union, with many of the top players bucking the trend of years gone by, and defecting from RL to RU.

Whelan sells Wigan RL, but offers them a long term agreement to rent the stadium. Although he has no influence within the RL club anymore, it’s an olive branch to the RL community of Wigan and ensures Whelan does not alienate himself from a large proportion of the town. He is protecting his business, and possibly, moral interests.

Back to your post…

Yes, you pay rent to Whelan because it’s his stadium and he doesn’t own Wigan RL. Wigan RL couldn’t keep that stadium afloat by themselves. Wigan Athletic could and the £200k received a year doesn’t really make a massive dent in the running costing of a football team or stadium. So yes, it is a ‘gesture of goodwill’ to offer a long term tenancy agreement to Wigan RL. He doesn’t own the club and it entitled to tell them to find their own stadium.

Your mortgage analogy is utter shYte. With a mortgage, you don’t go from legally being entitled to a property, to suddenly having to pay rent as a tennant.

Given the choice, Whelan would have two football teams playing at the stadium, or failing that, a successful Orrell, Wasps, Bath, Harlequins, or even Lancashire CCC. Whatever you think (and I genuinely don’t dislike Rugby League – just some of the people in Wigan who watch it), Rugby League will always be perceived as a sport for northern folk in mining towns , who juggle it around their commitments in whippets, racing pigeons and brass bands. It has little commercial benefit outside of the M62 corridor, whatever the ‘history’ (etc) of Wigan RL.

Got all that?

and this one thinks sky doesnt controll football :lol:

wake up lad , they say when you/us play and kick off

and this one thinks sky doesnt controll football :lol:

wake up lad , they say when you/us play and kick off[/quote]
You really are as thick as pig shyte aren’t you?

The whole point of that post is that Sky TV money controls both football and RL.

The difference is, there will always be an investor for football.

wake up lad , they say when you/us play and kick off[/quote]

Where did I say that Sky doesn’t control football? Of course it does. To the tune of about £1bn every 2 or 3 years actually, which allows each team to earn around £250k every time they are shown live.

Also, as you know from painful experience, it forces rugby league teams to move their fixtures to accommodate a televised football game whenever the need arises. It can do this because it has also bought the whole sport of rugby league for about £75m around 15 years ago. Remember, when they made you switch to playing in the summer and add daft animals to the end of your club names in return for never having to face the danger of relegation again and having about 3 chances of losing in your main competition yet still winning it?

Now, if – and it’s a huge if – Sky were to decide that they no longer want to pay for football rights, there would be a huge queue of suitors fighting to step in to the gap. Can’t see that happening with super league, can you?

Finally, are you really this stupid, lad, or do you go to night school to get better at it?