Glad to see one of the postivies of latics going down is the riddiculous 24 hour rule has been dropped....they're playing at home to Notts Forrest today which I didn't realise until just now.

Sets a precedent for any further games and should mean we have no problem with playing at home for any future play off games! FINALLY we've seen the back of all that rubbish!

I agree, relations are much better now, as they were last time they were in the Championship. Long may it continue!

there is/was no 24 hour rule..it was a figment of Whelans imagination when it suited him to dredge it up.

I dont think theres a rule that says they can play in the same WEEK when they go back to the conference

I realised there was no so called rule, but just glad to see a precent has now been set with todays game...means that the rubbish can't be trotted out any more, and we won't have any problem with challenge cup or play off games in the future!!

That is so true.

It was never a rule. And pre PL we always played the night before them and nothing was said

Agreed!

Didn't we used to get various Premier league TV pundits having a pop at the state of the pitch and blaming it on the RL side?

I think Latics were probably under some pressure to provide a good playing service and the fact it looked absolutely fine at the end of the SL season never seemed to be taken account of. As soon as it looked less than perfect it was the RL sides fault despite not even playing on it at the time! Maybe Latics were trying to appease their Premiership counterparts who can seemingly injure themselves tripping on blade of grass.

Be interesting to see if Hull have the same nonsense to deal with!

At hull all the rugby haters moan about the pitch but bruce and barmby have both said it wasn't the rugby's fault. Also we have written in the stadium agreement we get stadium priorty at the end of our season and city theirs.

The one that sticks in my mind is Hansen a couple of years ago blaming us for the state of the pitch (I think Chelsea had visited) two weeks before our season had even started.

Have you all really fell for this " all friends together" garbage, now latics are out of the limelight?

That would be nice if it doesn't become null and void once City made the PL again. The only rule which the PL has is that teams involved in ground shares must have priority use of their stadium. So if Sky/BT/The PL tell Hull City that they're playing at a time when Hull FC were meant to play then who do you think will be changing their fixture?

The PL never plays Friday night so thats when the rugby is played. This leaves Saturday and Sunday for the Premier League to move fixtures around. As one of the undesirable teams in the league according to Sky I don't think there is another Sky game scheduled up til Christmas. This problem only happens at playoff time because in general both teams play alternate weekends.

Its if your playoff clashes with their fixture. If sky won't move your game then you find somwwhere to play like we had too.

See what you are saying but with Warrington confirmed as 3pm (or whatever time) on Saturday I reckon we could fulfil the other time slots. It happened in 2007 I think and city played at 1pm and fc at 6pm

That was in the Championship. It also depends what the owner of Hull City deems as priority. Dave Whelan deemed that he needed 24 hours to make the stadium ready for Premier League football. If the City chairman had the same idea then it's sh*t creek and paddle. He seems to have upset both sets of fans in Hull this year though so maybe he'll now focus on annoying Hull KR

I thought it was the owner of the stadium who decided how long they needed to turn it from a rugby to a football ground (and vice versa). In Wigan's case, the stadium owner happens to be DW, but the KC stadium is owned by Hull Council, and therefore they (through the stadium management company) will decide how much time is required, not Hull City FC.

I don't think so . The RL fans on Humberside can get quite militant.



And there's a lot of them.

The SMC are the owners of Hull City

Wasn't it that DW didn't want to (or wouldn't) pay his staff overtime to make the pitch available for the short turn around?

that was because the stadium owner, who also happened to be the chairman of Latics made up a load of boloxx so the pitch would be at a standard acceptable to his buddy Sir Purple Nose .........it still makes me ****** mad

I thought it was more that the game was a short-notice playoff one that nobody really expected - IIRC, a last-day win for Wigan against Saints, coupled with another unexpected result game us a home tie against Bradford that sky refused to televise on the Sunday. Since that day, either DW has realised that he was in the wrong (probably), or his Stadium Management Company have discovered that the DW can be converted from rugby to football (and vice versa) in less than 24 hours, and that the pitch doesn't resemble a ploughed field.

The premier league game that was taking place the next day on that occasion was against Sunderland.

As has been said further up the SMC are the owners of Hull City. I have listened to the radio on the way home from games where they broadcast from the stadium and they have said the staff have moved in and are taking the rugby posts down and putting the football posts up. I presume they do it all on Friday night before they go home ready for 3pm kick off on Saturday. Think the precedent has been set because its happened like this for years through the leagues. Assem Allam (City/SMC chairman) asked fc to move the game before the last game of the football season and it was too short notice and it stayed where it was. This problem only comes up at playoff time when the football season has just got going again and sky want to televise them all so can't necessarily play when the stadium is free

Fergie has always been happy with RL. Never heard him say a bad comment, even in seasons where Old Trafford was used twice for RL games in a couple of months. The worst for me was always Steve Bruce. Wenger used to complain about the pitch but never directly attacked RL