On Saturday night Warrington RLFC could win our first championship since 1955. To put that into context, I'm in my thirties and my mum wasn't even born then!

Of the 14 clubs currently in Super League, all of them have been crowned champions more recently than us with the exceptions of Castleford, Catalan and London, all of whom have never won it and two of whom are not long standing clubs. As a support we like to pretend that we're a big club, but those cold hard statistics suggest we are nothing of the sort.

This week we have seen posts on here about "The Sky Cup", negative experiences at Old Trafford last year (hardly surprising seeing as how we lost), negative comparisons to Wembley, and various other drivel. All of which in my view completely misses the point. Whether you agree with the play offs or not (I do) and whether you like the current format of them or not (I don't) is irrelevant. Surely you want your team to be crowned champions via whatever method must be followed to achieve that! Especially when the last time that happened was FIFTY EIGHT YEARS AGO!

If you don't want and crave that then either you're a pretty dispassionate spectator rather than supporter, or you just plain might as well give up. This is what needs to happen so on Saturday night - against the club most of us regard as our greatest rivals and who are indisputably the biggest in the game - lets go out there and rewrite history.

NOW THE WIRE

What he said!

The last two years I have watched Leeds in the WCC and been sick with envy. To join the elite group that have won the SL and get the chance to take on the best team in the NRL Premiership would be out of this world. To do so against a local rival is just heavenly!

complete utter .

to suggest the only club never to have played outside of the Top flight that won its first Championship before Leeds did before Widnes did before Bradford did. that played in front of 120,000 people in a challenge cup final.
That had the greatest player ever to put boots on, who scored 200 and odd more tries than Billy Boston, a team that has won every honour in the game bar a 16 year old WCC competition. the team that was the first club team to beat the last defeated Touring Australians. A team that has recently had players like Langer Johns Davies, Boyd Morley play for them... a team that even when it has been a bit still has had great players and a tremendous Following.........is not a big club then you may as well pack in the games gone to feck.............

I am Bobby Ewing and the Last 30 years of Watching Wires has been a bad dream and I was just having a shower......

its great you are up for but to start to compare us with london is pathetic ............after all we've been here before we had a chance in 95 if you remember we had a chance last year too..........

I hope we win ...because it will makes us champions and we'll have beaten wigan on the way.....it wont re-write our history...... Bevan will still be the greatest ever. Phil Blake and Davies will still be rugby genious's and Boyd will still be a god....
it wont dim the games I saw at wilderspool and I wont say we used to be small and crap just because we may win on Saturday, because we weren't small and crap.....

you could have simply wrote something positive like

"Lets do it for Greg"

and Feck all else needed to be said.........

+1

Oo I've got a tingle.

"and Darbs"

I am getting emotional. I will be a wreck on Saturday like I was after the first Challenge Cup win.

Come on Wire.

I understand the sentiment behind the OP's opinion, yet I get FB's point to.

To me, damn right Saturday means a hell of a lot. The past has been brilliant to watch, and I will remember it forever. But Saturday could be the story and the team that I tell my kids about when they are growing up. My dad told me the stories of the great teams of the 70's and watched countless videos of some of his heros, well this could be THE video that I show my kids, telling them of the day when my team beat Wigan in the final.

I can see both sides of the argument here. Let's be honest, in the modern era you need to win the big prize to be regarded as a top club.

Every time Koukash has opened his mouth there has been a thread on here saying Salford can never be a big club. Nobody remembers Les Diables Rouge, the side that caught the eyes of a nation and introduced it to the greatest game.

Exactly. This club had a golden era when Bevan played for us - we were undoubtedly the cream of that period and our roll of honour proves it - and we'll all have had highlights from our personal time as supporters, watching players like Davies and Langer, and recently winning Challenge Cups, but unless you were watching us in the 50s - and I'll be surprised if anyone posting on here was - then you haven't seen us be crowned champions.

The supporters of the real big clubs in modern day rugby league - Wigan, Leeds, St Helens, and to a lesser extent - based on their golden era being a lot more recent than our 40s and 50s heydey - Bradford, who have all seen their teams win the major prizes with their own eyes, won't see us as more than an upstart just because Brian Bevan scored a lot of tries before they were born.

58 years is a long [ilong[/i time. On Saturday it can end. This is absolutely massive.

I don't understand why Dropkick's OP is supposedly in opposition to the Flying Biscuit's. DM is right - it's more than about time we went and won the championship, and the FB is right that us not having won it doesn't invalidate what we've done and achieved in the interim. We'll still be a big club if we don't win on Saturday.

But FFS, people do need to stop moaning about how the train was a bit hot last year or saying that Huddersfield are the true champions. It's laughable and embarrassing.

Get on the phone, get tickets bought and let's do it for all of the great Wire players, coaches, staff and fans who haven't quite made it before. For Parry Gordon, Les Boyd, Mike Gregory, Paul Cullen, Paul Darbyshire and thousands more.

Well said that man. In 1954 hardly anyone in the town owned a car- yet tens of thousands ,made the journey to Odsal by piling into the back of vans, waving down cars and forcing their way onto trains. People piled railway sleepers up so that they could stand on them to see, and pulled down fences to get into the bowl. Children were passed down and sat on the touchline, hardly a soul could see. Yet the people I have spoken to who were there wouldn't have changed it for the world.

Lets rekindle that 1954 spirit, get there by hook or by crook and pack Old Trafford and the city of Manchester out on Saturday, watch history hopefully unfold before our eyes and enjoy the greatest game of all!

Don't be the person who sits watching at home or in the pub feeling absolutely sick because they decided not to bother for some daft reason. Even if you have never watched the sport, as a Warringtonian there is nowhere else to be on Saturday!

I need a drink or ten.

Spot on. Pure cringeworthy.

It's threads like this that are threatening to turn me to drink to cure the extreme nervousness that I'm currently feeling (that and and the excrutiating pain of recently diagnosed sciatica!)

I'm only aware of the "good old days" of WRLFC through books, archived videos etc. I'm a Warringtonian born and bred, yet only start supporting the local RL team through a friend in 2002 and it still pains me that I never discovered this fantastic game, and this fantastic club many years previously.

Saying that though, my debut season supporting the Wire was kind of a baptism of fire, and at times I wondered what the hell I had done. Yet I stuck with it, watched us at the Shay that year get a gritty win over Halifax, and never looked back. Into my 10th year as a season ticket holder, finally seen us lift a challenge cup, the league leaders shield, and now, I just hope to god on Saturday I see Wire lift the Super League trophy.

God, I love this game (and this club!)

NB: The Chooks are also in to the NRL Grand Final, so should both teams win, that would be my dream World Club Challenge. Buuuut I'm not thinking that far ahead at the moment.

I am supposed to be preparing for a presentation which I am giving tomorrow, but my stomach is doing somersaults and I can't concentrate. It's only Monday!

Two nights running I have woken up in a cold swea  and I am pretty confident too, blame last year for it only just in the last few days have I watched the match again and looked at photos from the day on my phone.

Five more sleeps

getting as bad as football with the muppets who think it didn't exist before '92. RL was around long before SKY and it's ty SKY cup.

You're preaching to the converted.


As with all the bollox about Wigan buying their success in the 80's and 90's. Nobody mentions the money spent by Salford in the late 60's, Wire in the 70's and Hull/HKR in the 80's.

Indeed it was, and 58 seasons of rugby league have been played since Warrington were last crowned as champions of it (in a play off final incidentally). That's kinda my point. Saturday could be a monumental moment in our history.

I do find it amusing when people talk about history extending beyond SL, then insist that play off football was invented by Sky Sports.

If winning a playoff competition decides who are champions then Wire were champions in the 80's in the days of Andy Gregory, Les Boyd and Mark Roberts.

No they weren't. Don't be silly.

Another one who misses the point.

IF the competition was the same as it was in the 80s then I would have been desperate for the League Leader's Shield and cursing those two defeats to Widnes. We would also have been crowned champions as recently as two years ago. It isn't like that though. Simple as that.

You can't change the history books to suit your own preferences whatever they may be.

The history books state that Warrington last won the Rugby League Championship in 1955. Unfortunately for us we have finished top twice in that period when play offs decided the champions, and we have won a play off series when finishing top decided the champions. Unlucky, but we know the rules and what is required at the beginning of every season and we play to win according to those rules. Those rules state that we will win it again if we beat Wigan on Saturday. No arguments, no ifs, no buts. That's the reality and that's what we need to do.

Now let's get out there and win it!

Whilst I agree with the sentiments of your post and that of Ganson's, I have always supported the FPTP system to decide the League Champions. However, I will be there on Saturday in full voice and suitably turned out, to cheer the boys on hopefully to a much awaited victory.

Yes it will be up there with the biggest games I have watched, but' it won't change my mind on the 'validity' of a Play off v FPTP system.

I will be as chuffed as Dickie Mint if we win comforted in the knowledge that the two positions aren't mutually exclusive. There will be no protest, stay away vote from Uncle Rico

NOW THE WIRE