Wigan In Super League's Early Days

Hello and welcome to this extended preview chapter of my upcoming written work BACK ON TOP  which details Wigan's glorious 1998 Super League championship winning season which I'm hoping to have out in the new year. I hope you enjoy this chapter and you may consider buying the book when it hits Amazon's virtual shelves. 

Prologue: Wigan In Super League’s Early Days

Super League was just what rugby league in England needed. In a blaze of publicity and promotion, Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation fired a huge shot across the boughs of the Australian Rugby League by signing up the British game for his Super League project as the bitter civil war for broadcasting supremacy raged on down under. The £87million investment was to prove vital to many clubs across England and despite some opposition (mainly with regards to mergers), the much discussed move to summer rugby was on. 

Despite their position as the undisputed powerhouse of rugby league in England (and arguably the world, they had of course won the most recent World Club Challenge in 1994), Wigan were in fact one of the clubs desperate for the promised riches that Super League would bring. The exuberance of the Maurice Lindsay years and the phenomenal spending that came with it (including Martin Offiah’s world record £440,000 transfer from Widnes in 1992) had finally caught up with the club. 

Perhaps it was a sign of the new era that was dawning in the game when, on Sunday 11th February 1996, Wigan’s eight-year stranglehold on the Challenge Cup came to a shock end away at second division Salford. After they had hammered Bramley 74-12 in the fourth round at Central Park, the team (still coached at this point by Graeme West) travelled across Greater Manchester probably in expectation more than anything given the lower-division status of their opposition. Salford, coached by Wigan legend Andy Gregory, had other ideas. 

The hosts took the lead in the fourth minute through Welshman David Young and the Salford faithful could scarcely believe their luck when centre Scott Naylor doubled his side’s advantage and despite Inga Tuigimala pulling one back to reduce Wigan’s arrears to 14-4, a stirring comeback wasn’t on the cards as Salford began the second half in the same way they had started the first period when Naylor gratefully received Paul Forber’s short ball and scythed through the defence.

Martin Offiah crossed for Wigan in an attempt to close the gap but the day belonged to the team from The Willows as Scott Martin clinched the game for Salford with ten minutes to go, not even a late second try for Tuigimala could stir a Wigan fightback and for the first time since losing to Oldham in February 1987, they were out of the Challenge Cup. The victory for Salford proved even sweeter for former full-back Steve Hampson, one of a number of ex-Wigan players in the home side on the day, who took great delight at voicing his celebrations at Wigan chairman Jack Robinson.

Despite the premature Challenge Cup exit, once the maiden Super League campaign got underway it seemed very much business as usual as Wigan got the 1996 season off to a winning start. The 56-16 win over Oldham at Boundary Park sparked a run of eight wins from their opening nine games (the only blot on their copybook coming on the inaugural Good Friday of the summer era as St. Helens claimed the derby bragging rights with a 41-26 win at Knowsley Road in glorious conditions). The winning run was halted in early June when London Broncos came away from Central Park with a point following an 18-all draw which would later have bigger repercussions on Wigan’s title ambitions. 

The championship ultimately boiled down to the traditional East Lancs rivals. Wigan would only lose once more during 1996 (to Bradford, the only other team to defeat St. Helens in a league match during the season) and would gain revenge for their Good Friday derby defeat, downing Saints 35-19 at Central Park in late June (the final game of Martin Offiah’s Wigan career before he returned to his native London). With neither Wigan or Saints willing to blink, the season went down to a deciding August Bank Holiday weekend. 

On the Sunday, Wigan signed off their regular season campaign with a bruising 78-4 win over already relegated Workington (the first and to date only Cumbrian side to play in Super League) which sent them top of the table for the last time this season and left Graeme West and his side needing Warrington to do them a favour on Bank Holiday Monday against St. Helens. Unfortunately for Wigan, Saints romped to a 66-14 win at Knowsley Road to not only clinch the Super League title but also the ‘Double’ having beaten Bradford 40-32 at Wembley to seal the Challenge Cup. The title was decided by just a single point, the draw with London in June proving more detrimental than first thought. 

The season didn’t end completely without success as Wigan took home the Super League Premiership Trophy, defeating St. Helens 44-14 in the final at Old Trafford thanks in part to a Danny Ellison hat-trick. The team also gained national recognition after bloodying the noses of Rugby Union as well. 

As 100 years of division came to an end when the fifteen-man code went fully professional in 1995, the battlelines were drawn in 1996 as Wigan took on Union’s top English club side Bath in a two-match ‘Clash of the Codes’ series. In the first game played under rugby league rules at Manchester City’s Maine Road ground, Wigan crushed Bath 82-6, running in sixteen tries (Martin Offiah scoring six of them himself) before losing the return leg at Twickenham played under union rules by a respectable 44-19 scoreline. In between the two games, Wigan also entered and won the prestigious Middlesex Sevens tournament for good measure. 

If 1996 was a shock to the system, 1997 could be described as close to an annus horribilis as the relegation season of 1979-80. Failure to land either of the big trophies saw Graeme West lose his job as coach to be replaced by former St Helens boss Eric Hughes. It had been reported that West was given an ultimatum to either move ‘upstairs’ and accept the job of team manager or leave the club. 

In terms of playing departures, veteran Great Britain and Wales international prop forward Kelvin Skerrett left to join Halifax on a free transfer while legendary scrum-half and former captain Shaun Edwards’ fourteen year association with Wigan came to an end. After making his debut as a 17-year-old in 1983 and winning every trophy available to him in cherry and white (including all three of the club’s World Club Challenge victories), Edwards joined Martin Offiah at London Broncos. The financial force of rugby union turning professional was also felt at Central Park when Sir John Hall and Rob Andrew made Inga Tuigimala the most expensive oval-ball player in the world as the former All-Black returned to the 15-man code with Newcastle. 

Castleford’s Tony Smith was recruited as Edwards’ replacement in the scrum-half position while forwards Ian Sherratt and Stephen Holgate were signed from Oldham and Workington respectively earlier in the off-season as was Kiwi fullback Doc Murray. Widnes prop Lee Hansen came to the club in April 1997 in an exchange deal that saw future Lance Todd Trophy winner and Great Britain international Sean Long move in the opposite direction. Also joining the club after the start of the season was Tongan international centre Paul Koloi from New Zealand side Canterbury. Regularly listed in retrospective lists as one of the club’s worst ever signings, Koloi would only make a handful of appearances before being released at the end of the season. 

Financial troubles were plaguing the club off the field amid rumoured debts in the region of £3million. Boardroom wranglings also erupted over the future of the club’s Central Park home. Initially it was planned that the ground would be sold to ambitious Wigan Athletic FC chairman Dave Whelan who intended to redevelop the ground into a home for both the soccer and rugby clubs but this was later rejected in favour of a bid from supermarket giant Tesco. It was then the club’s intention to move out of Wigan to share the Reebok Stadium with Premier League soccer club Bolton Wanderers until a new home could be built. 

This move was met with anger both in the boardroom and on the terraces as supporters protested against the move and director John Martin (a vocal supporter of the plan to sell the ground to Whelan) resigning from the board. Directors Jack Robinson and Tom Rathbone (the last two members of the ‘gang of four’ that have saved the club in the 1980s with Maurice Lindsay and Jack Hilton) eventually resigned from the board in light of the vitriol that had seen attendances dwindle. The year ended with former St. Helens player turned local businessman Mike Nolan becoming chairman of the club while the plans to move to the Reebok Stadium were shelved in favour of sharing what would become The Brick Community Stadium with Wigan Athletic upon it’s completion which was slated for 1999. 

If events were turbulent off the field, results on the pitch left plenty to be desired. For the second year in a row, the Challenge Cup campaign came to an end before it had a chance to begin, exiting the competition at the first hurdle after a 26-12 reverse to St. Helens at Knowsley Road in the fourth round while early season defeats to the likes of Saints (a second Good Friday defeat in a row), Warrington, Bradford and Super League new boys Salford saw the club fall off the pace in the league. 

A run of five consecutive wins in May (which included a 65-12 hammering of St Helens at Knowsley Road) appeared to steady the ship but poor results still plagued Wigan with the nadir arguably coming in July when they were beaten 30-28 by crisis club Paris St Germain. Some solace was drawn from the club’s final away game of the season as they came up with a stirring fightback from 18-0 down to defeat already confirmed champions Bradford 35-18 at Odsal to send the home side’s unbeaten record up in flames before the regular season ended with a 38-22 win over Leeds at Central Park. The eventual fourth place finish was the first time Wigan had finished outside of the league’s top two places since 1988.

For the second season in a row, Wigan claimed the Premiership Trophy. After seeing off Leeds and Sheffield in the first round and semi-final respectively, the club downed St Helens at Old Trafford for the second year in a row, beating their arch-rivals 33-20 at the home of Manchester United. 

In the World Club Championship (a competition that can be filed under the ‘ambitious but rubbish’ category), Wigan were one of the few European sides to emerge with any credit. A Jason Robinson double helped the team on their way to a 22-18 away win over Canterbury (the only away win recorded by a Euro Super League team) but they were unable to back their victory up in their remaining matches on Australian soil, going down 34-0 to Brisbane (in a match perhaps more famous for the bloody brawl between Wigan prop Terry O’Connor and fearsome Broncos forward Gorden Tallis) before receiving a 56-22 humbling at the hands of Canberra. 

It was much the same in the return fixtures at Central Park, Canterbury Bulldogs were once again beaten in between Brisbane holding Wigan tryless for the second time (30-4) and another demolition at the hands of Mal Meninga’s Canberra with Simon Haughton scoring Wigan’s only try in a miserable 50-10 defeat. As winners of European Pool A, the team were rewarded with a home quarter-final and although this is where Wigan’s competition ended, they once again emerged with a modicum of credit as they were narrowly defeated 22-18 by eventual finalists Hunter Mariners. 

Given the at times disastrous league form and another early exit from the Challenge Cup, it probably came as little surprise when Eric Hughes was relieved of his duties at the end of the season. 

With the top job vacant once again for the fourth time in as many years, it was time for a messiah to return to Central Park.