Maybe if Salford had made the same decision without informing the RFL or Widnes then they would be deducted and fined to the max

Do you actually WANT us to have points docked? With friends like you who needs enemies!

You might think that winning the WCC would allow fans to be universally supportive of IL.

This cock up is manner from heaven for the likes of you isn't it? Always willing to stick the boot in.

I wouldn't blame IL if he thought of jacking it all in. After all, there's just no pleasing some folk.

Maybe. I guess we'll never know, but don't let that stop you sitting there and getting increasingly furious about the potential injustic of such an imaginary event ... Walder.

How can Wigan RL be fined and/or docked points for a decision which was beyond their control?
The SMC could well have advised us in writing that the ground was no longer available for the game.
Also why would Wigan want a Friday 8pm ko with a 5 day turnaround from the Cronulla game? Surely Wigan's best option would have been a 7 day turnaround playing Sunday the day after the 'tics. The only body demanding a Friday game would be SKY. They decide when TV games are played, not the club nor RFL but SKY!

I blame the pitch, the Latics (a team in the relegation zone) need a bowling green standard surface to showcase their obvious skill and quality.

Whoever arranges the fixtures at RL Headquarters has to take some of the blame here. They know the football fixtures well before they fix the Superleague matches. Surely it shouldn't be a difficult matter to see that clubs who groundshare with soccer teams are given home fixtures when the soccer teams are away. At this time of year having two matches at the same ground over a weekend is asking for the problem that has been faced in this instance.

Yes, I want a massive fine and points docked. One big hit may give Lenagan the kick he needs to open negotiations with the stadium people that need to happen.

How the fans have been treated is disgraceful.

According to Cockney Latic the pitch was watered at half time!
Did they not want us to play because there was too much standing water or not enough?

Dont worry, if the go down this year, they will dissapear off the face of the earth.

Wigan like all clubs were given multiple drafts of the fixture list to approve or highlight any issues. This isn't an issue at other clubs where things are changed well in advance or, shockingly, the stadium can cope with more than one event a weekend.

But I'll ask again since some of you continue to try and for some reason blame the RFL: are there 11 weekends, excluding WCC, cup, Magic and International when the DW Stadium would be available during the regular season - if weekends when the Latics were playing at home and the weeks of never-ending pitch work (which always happens during the RL season I note) are excluded?

It's up to member clubs to have suitable stadia that are available to play scheduled games. Rocket science it's not; if you can't meet this quite fundamental criteria of membership of a professional sporting compeition then perhaps you're better off in the NW Counties league. No other member club of the RFL seems to have these difficulties.

S...S..

THERE'S ONLY ONE TEAM IN WIGAN........ that won this weekend...

Its time we had our own ground, I don't see what the issue is as it's us who will be paying for it over the next god knows how many years.

If Leigh can do it and we can't, what's going on there then? I'm sick of playing second fiddle to the football now, it's beyond a joke. Add to that we can't have homecomings or testimonial games at the DW or amateur cup games or academy games either at the ground.

We need our own ground.

I suspect they thought that if both teams came out in flippers, they'd have more chance of winning. They were wrong.

Maybe if we played the night before we may have left some divots so that rather than getting 0 shots on target one of them may have hit the said divot and headed towards the goal.....

Leigh don't have their own ground.
It's Wigan councils

If your going to throw out analogies then make sure there's some fact behind them.

As for owning our own ground I would have thought suitable land, planning permissions and possibly 50/100 million pound of funding may be "a couple of issues".

As most people know I'm not one for criticising until all the facts are known.
Stark reality here is that of all the people in the world I'd have least thought would have made this mistake it would be Ian leneghan. He's usually a dot the i's type.person.

But there's no excuse as far as I can see.
If he's any sense he'll wait till the outcome of any RFL investigation and then hold his hands up and take any criticism etc. That comes his way.

Moving forward is another matter but in the short term we need to make the best of the situation and deal with it better than this.

In complete agreement regarding IL.

Always been a big fan since he took over and defended him on here when he didn't renew Nobby's contract.

Always a fan of him even after this recent shocking episode because although the fans credit the coaches (Madge/Shaun) IL created the spring clean needed and put everything in place.

The events of this week don't seem to stack up, IL would never normally and hasn't previously put himself and Wigan in such a situation so to me that means the problems were beyond his control and as stated earlier in the thread he was trying to save face...

It's not going to happen. The majority that have their own ground have paid for it by selling their old one for housing and built on an area where the land is cheaper. The stadiums also often have input from local authorities and the lottery fund and sometimes EU funding.

We have no ground to sell, the local authority has already contributed to the DW and LSV, I doubt the lottery would contribute as there are already 2 stadiums in the borough and some numpties voted us out of the EU. Anyone have a spare £100 mil or so? That's before anyone starts thinking about a suitable site and planning permission.

The only realistic option we have is investigating the possibility of becoming equal tenants which we clearly are not. That's not the fault of IL, he didn't nearly bankrupt the club 20 years ago nor did he sign the tenancy agreement.

Where is the "like" button?

If we had a new stadium would it have standing areas, reasonably priced food and drink and have free parking? Would fans consider an artificial pitch? Could the pitch be surrounded with cameras like hawkeye at the tennis courts for a multitude of camera angles and real time angle comparisons like they use in the aussie bunker? Sadly it's a no to all of the above....

Excellent post. Didn't Dave Whelan want to buy and renovate Central Park at one point, Jack Robinson said no, the club nose dived and Whelan stepped in and moved us in with the latics? This is a summary of course.

The current predicament goes back to the Jack Robinson Era. IL bought out this situation from Dave Whelan, and which at least give us a home, all be it playing second fiddle at times. DW tried to keep us at central park, he wanted to out money in and move the football in. Jack Robinson said no and nearly ruined us. Had Whelan not come in who knows what would have become of the club.

There's a lot of land on the Central Park site that could be developed into a stadium. I think Saints cost around £25 million so not as expensive as some are saying to do the build though I can't see the sale of Orrell funding it. The issue will always be raising funds and the planning permission.

If the Latics really are heading South with all the financial grief that implies, wouldn't it be cheaper/more realistic to re-negotiate the stadium share to make us the dominant partner (would mean we'd have to put more into the pot), and spend proper money on a good drainage system at the DW?

No.

Latics have a rich owner who is perfectly happy to pump a few quid of his own money into his club.

We have a rich owner.