Well this week saw yet another member of the national media take a huge swipe at little Wigan Athletic. This time it was the turn of Mick Dennis. It seems Wigan only getting 17,000 through the turnstiles each week just isn’t good enough and therefore the Championship beckons.
Funny that, because last time I checked the rule book there was no mention of teams not being able to compete in any given league based on how many attend their matches. The FA must have omitted that one, how foolish of them.
I think the point really is that for years our club has over-achieved beyond the wildest dreams of anyone connected with Wigan Athletic. For a short time the press and the majority of outsiders jumped on our bandwagon and were heaping praise on our achievement of moving through the leagues so quickly and reaching the very top.
However, the tables appear to have turned. Those people don’t want to praise us now. They don’t want to say how well were doing or “that’s how a football club should be run.” They want to take every possible little swipe at us that they can. Their love for our club has turned to hate. The very fact there’s only one thing they can ever criticise us for is our attendances makes me smile, I’m sorry to say. It really is a sad state of affairs.
If you were to ask me right now which sets of supporters have given grief to me personally over the last few weeks and months I think you’ll quickly see a pattern emerging. Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Coventry City and, most recently, Norwich City (Mick Dennis’ team), to name but a few. (Even Wigan Warriors fans are having a go and they get less through the turnstiles than we do!)
Now can you detect the pattern? Yes, they have all been Premier League clubs in their day and most have been some sort of force in Europe too. The trouble is, while Wigan have been lauding it up in the Premier League, their respective clubs have been struggling a division (or two divisions, in some cases) below us.
What’s the reason for the barrage of abuse? The answer, quite simply, is jealousy. Their clubs have been run so poorly while we’ve been working our way to our current position. Just because they get more through the turnstiles in their respective divisions than Wigan Athletic do in the top flight, that makes it alright to try and give the club and its loyal supporters a bad name.
When they dish out their criticism there’s not thought to the fact there’s little over 80,000 people in our town. No thought to the fact we’ve got 7 other Premier League clubs within a stones throw of our ground. No thought to the fact we’ve spent most of our history in non-league football. No thought to that fact we were getting just 1,800 through the turnstiles only 16 years ago. No thought to the fact that we’ve not got generations of supporters to call upon now we’re in the big time. The list goes on.
It’s wrong. What Wigan Athletic have achieved in the past 15 years is something few clubs will ever achieve in their entire history. It’s something that I, for one, am immensely proud of and, even if we do suffer from the dreaded ‘R’ word at the end of the season, we can always look back fondly at what we achieved, which is more than can be said of the aforementioned clubs and their under-achievements.
We’ll never be bitter and twisted about what we once had. We’ll always be grateful for what we had and respect that we couldn’t punch above our weight forever. We’ll always know it’s not that long ago we were in the bottom division and we’re not blinkered enough to think we have a divine right to be in the upper echelons of English football forever.
More importantly, we’ll always be here. It doesn’t matter what league we’re in, whether we get 1,700 or 17,000 through the gates, whether we’ve got a millionaire backer or go back to the days of collection buckets outside the turnstiles. There’ll always be a Wigan Athletic.
No one likes us, we don’t care.
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