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I understand what you mean but we had so much land at Springfield and with some help rather than hindrance from the council (The Devil Incarnate) access and further parking could have been made on four sides quite easily. We could have fit The New York Stadium in there no problem with plenty more car parking spaces available behind the Shevvy and Town ends.
Not much point in talking about it now though as we moved to and contributed to the development of New Springfield with the sale of Springy and the grants we received from the football trust.We couldn’t put turnstiles on the St Andrew’s Side, nor could the height of the stand s be increased & we didn’t own the land behind the town end. To have made a bigger stadium would either have involved buying up all the surrounding houses (as Liverpool did) &/or moving the pitch – getting planning permission to develop Springfield Park when all the houses were already in situ would have been nigh on impossible
I’m aware of some alleged shenanigans involving the council & the town’s sporting sides but I do know that they were helpful with pushing the JJB through. They even broke their own planning regulations to do it which I think came to light when that scrap yard owner took them to court
And for what it’s worth, the sale of Springfield Park did not fund the building of the JJB in any way, shape or form
I don’t see anything cocky or disrespectful in the article you liked to VAT.
As for making the bar home supporters only – to me that looks more like that they have limited capacity, need to cut down demand for it (so less queues & possibly aggro in said queues) & they know they can fill it to capacity with home fans anyway
FA Cup history (and pretty much all our history) is available on here as always. Plenty of time and effort goes into this stuff you know. ;)
That was my first port of call but it only shows the score & scorers – not when they scored :P[/quote]
I would put money on us having equalised with that last minute goal. I’ve searched high and low for the scorers and times, but none of the statistical links have them. I thought we went 2 nil down, both scored by Dave Sutton. Harrison Park was an alright little ground, from what I remember. 12th November 1993.[/quote]
No it was definitely the other way round – the only thing I’ve waivered on since my original post was whether they equalised to make it 1-1 before Neil Morton scored to put us back in front at 2-1 – pretty certain he scored to make it 2-0 though as I can remember the goal as well as mine & my mate’s celebrations after he scored it.
Definitely them who scored in the last minute thoughI bow to your better memory marrer I remember the shorts not matching the kit and it looking strange. Memory on the blink methinksTo be fair, I had to google it but I did think when I saw your post that I was sure we played in black shorts at the time anyway!!
FA Cup history (and pretty much all our history) is available on here as always. Plenty of time and effort goes into this stuff you know. ;)That was my first port of call but it only shows the score & scorers – not when they scored :P
Are you sure? I am sure it was either Morton or Skipper (both scored) who did a bit of an overhead into top corner. A player called Sutton scored twice for them. They played in blue, and we had that red, white and black matchwinner away kit.I’m certain of it.
It was Swain’s first season with us & at the final whistle the first chants of “Swain Out” were aired. I ended up getting in to a pushing & shoving match with some bloke who started threatening & pushing round some kids (15 or 16ish) who were chanting it. That wouldn’t have happened if we’d equalised in the last minute as the mood would have been more bouyant.
If my memory serves me right Skipper did score a peach but it was in the first half when we were attacking the end to our right (Latics fans were located down one side). Morton scored down the other end (to the left) that had a big hill behind it and their last minute goal was scored down the opposite end.
I can’t find any stats online that show the minute each of the 4 goals was scored in but I’m pretty certain I’m reetLet us hope this is taken seriously with no changes to keep up the momentum. Wouldn’t like to see an upset but who knows in the cup.
Since joining the league does anyone know how many times non league sides have beaten us. Without checking I can recollect Telford United and Canvey Island. Fingers crossed it isn’t a third.Did we not also lose at Altrincham ? Remember going there and we played in black shorts for some reason think it was 2-1 but it was a long while ago.[/quote]
We played in white shorts for that Altrincham game – black was the usual short colour at the time with our “Inter Milan” kit, and Altrincham’s home kit is black shorts so hence why Latics wore white ones
We lost 1 nil at Altrincham in circa 1994-95. Altrincham had former Latics players Neil Morton and Chris Sharratt playing for them. Sharratt scored the winner. Another memory of that day is Latics fans winding their goalie up and him getting into a bit of an altercation with one of our fans.We nearly lost at Leek Town in 1993-94 as well, but for a last minute equalizer getting us a replay.
No messing about on Friday. Play our best side and go and put a display on. Dont embarrass ourselves.
Unfortunately the winding up of the Altrincham keeper also led to him playing an absolute blinder
Your memory’s wrong on the Lee Town game though – Latics were 2-0 up & coasting but 2 late goals (the last in the dying seconds) salvaged a draw for them.
Personally I think our stadium is great, great views, decent amount of toilets, pretty accessible by car or transport, good catering(theres a debate) plenty parking, great lounges. I wouldn’t change it and think we are lucky to have what we have.
Compared to what we had at springfield (where I have loads of great memories) it is a different class, access was rubbish, bovril and a wagon wheel was about all you could get (because the pie got thrown at the linesman), steep slope if you wanted to get off the ground towards lower ground, toilets that where just a channel in the ground etc.
If we then compare it to local competition, it is better than Bolton’s for access and viewing (their bottom tier is really shallow ) although externally theirs looks good, but their parking is a mare.
Preston? same capacity as ours so presumably the same empty seat issue, rubbish access.
Blackpool? bigger than they need, Blackburn? bigger than they need, Burnley, full when they are in the prem but a bit delapedated these days and same sort of size.
Don’t think we can then be compared with the liverpool and manchester teams.
That leaves other ‘new stadiums’ and beyond chester which has about 6k and is rubbish I can’t really think of other local football ones.
Then you look at other local clubs, would you rather have oldhams, rochdales or tranmere’s grounds?Not for me thanks, we may have a few too many seats but I think we should be delighted with what we have.
Others clearly disagree!
You’re right in everything you say about our stadium.
Doesn’t alter the fact that its too bigI am not into this ‘the Stadium is too big’ shite.
We have had well over a hundred attendances over 15,000 already and plenty more over 20,000 since we moved to the JJB/DW.
We have every chance of getting that many in, or more in the future.
Having a smaller capacity is small time thinking.
We are not ‘Little Wigan’ anymore, we are Wigan Athletic, who, only a few years ago lifted the FA Cup and were a Premier League Football Club.
We have to keep that in mind and keep hold of the ambition to keep growing as a club and get back to the PL.
Having a stadium with the capacity we have will help us to fullfill that ambition and get more fans in on the journey.
A 10/12K stadium like Bournemouths will not help them to grow as a club as once the PL fans drop off there crowds could easily be back down to 3/4K ala Blackpool who also have a low capacity stadium.
We have so far managed to keep hold of an extra 6000 fans since DW bought us, if we get back to the PL and average the heady heights of 20,000 or more again on a regular basis, it is possible that another 6000 fans will get the bug like they have over the last 20 years, and continue to watch us if and when we go down again.Actually, the “too big a stadium” theory makes sense & is about a lot more than showing ambition or not.
Look at it logically – In our first season up in the top flight you had a bit of premier league fever. New fans & long term part time fans wanted to be sure of getting to see the big boys & splurged out on season tickets. Longer term fans felt the same about away games & loads bought the away membership.
However, when it became clear that you didn’t need to do that &, if you wanted to pick & choose your games, that you could & you’d just be able to buy a ticket for individual games, the ST take up dropped & the away membership scheme was dropped by the club. (I do acknowledge that the price hike put some off too at the JJB)Now if the JJB had been built with the same capacity as say St Helens RL’s new ground then demand would have outstripped supply at home, people wouldn’t have been realised that they wouldn’t be able to pick & choose games, ST sales would have remained static and its likely that every game would have been a sell out (or bl00dy close to it) in the home sections – so no 12k attendances on v Fulham.
Its also likely that they could have gotten away with price hikes
Once that loyalty had built up the club could have looked at extending parts of the stadium.That said, I don’t know the maths & the club could well argue that having the bigger stadium & therefore bigger attendances than 18k at some games since 1999 has mean that the club has made more money than it would have done with a smaller gaff
We went out in our touring caravan a couple of years back & discovered it wasn’t far from where they were constructing the new stadium – whilst it looked impressive for a club that was then in the Evostik Prem (or had just gone up to the Conference North) I did wonder how it’d work if they ever achieved their goal of reaching the football league by 2020 as it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
That said, if they’d still been playing at their previous ground things would have been even worse. I ran the line there a couple of times & it literally was in a field behind a pub
I will certainly pay a tenner because it’s Wigan Athletic on the fixture, I’ve nothing else to stop me going, I love my club so I will be there just like in the old days when we could have had two matches in midweek. Floodlight cup and league games, Lancs Junior Cup and Floodlight Cup, Ashworth Trophy, Challenge Trophy, FA Cup, League Cups and League games plus benefit games and friendlies and the cups had second third and fourth replays. Three matches a week sometimes and all valued by fans. You may not go to them all but you wouldn’t just stay away on purpose like 4500 or so did on Saturday.At the end of the day, our manager made 5 changes to the team for Saturday’s match from the Blackburn – that’s 45% of available positions. That’s the manager’s prerogative, & I’ve no problem with it, but if the guy in charge doesn’t see it as a priority then I see no reason why supporters should treat it with the same priority as league games when deciding how to spend their hard earned cash.
We’re not the only club where it happens – Bradford City who get crowds of around 20,000 for league games had 4,700 so I’m not sure why people are getting their knickers in a twist about it happening at Latics
Why is anyone surprised? Its been happening for years
When Latics lost to Canvey Island back in 2001/02 there was 3671 onIt won’t be changed to the extent of the carabao or checkatrade games (mainly coz we have one of them in midweek) but they’ll be a good few changes.
Anyone carrying a slight knock will be rested, any first teamer who’s been playing bit parts (e.g. Colclough) will start & I think Grigg will start
