A good trip to Wigan, somewhere I'd never been before. We went to Manchester on Friday afternoon, and enjoyed an entertaining night out in a very cold Manchester.
On Saturday morning, still bleary-eyed, we headed off to lovely Wigan. Like a lot of towns around Manchester, it isn't a lot to look at! The journey from the motorway into town looked like about 5 minutes on the map, but seemed to take forever, through never ending villages spread along the main road. Eventually, we got through Wigan town centre and to the stadium - which is surrounded by more derelict land than I have ever seen so close to a town centre!! There is more empty land around than you can shake a stick at, which means lots of free parking for all.
I was very impressed indeed by the pie and pasty options around the stadium, lots of good lardy food to be had there! The stadium itself is typical of a new stadium, 4 identical stands, bare concourses where you can still see the girders and poles that hold the thing up. The floor in the concourse also bounced up and down when people were jumping about, which was nice! Kind of stupidly, the only food outlet for 5,000 people was positioned directly opposite the only gents toilets for 5,000 people. The crush at half time, as everybody tried to reach the middle of the concourse, was stupidly preventable, could have been dangerous, and underlines the fact that Wigan had never had to deal with a crowd as big as that one before. I completely trust, as well as hope and pray, that Arsenal's new stadium will be streets ahead of this.
25,000 people there, many of whom (given Wigan's recent attendances - 12,000 when top of the Championship!) clearly were new to football, and had quite possibly only come to see the Arsenal. Howling for a free kick (literally) every time a Wigan player went to ground, kind of indicated that many home fans either don't really know the rules of football, or thought they were watching rugby. The game (especially the first half) was full of thrills and spills, and finished as an entertaining 2-3 Arsenal win. It was obvious why Wigan started the game in second place - a well organised team, strong at the back, and dangerous up front too - they should continue to do well. I'd expect a return trip to the JJB next season.
The Guardian's match report is here
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment