On a Wednesday evening last March, one of Wigan Athletic[1]’s most familiar supporters was reported missing from his home on the town’s Beech Estate.
Darren Orme was vulnerable and when supporters at the local Brickmakers Arms pub started to search for him, expecting perhaps a dozen people to turn up and help, they found more than 100 in their midst.
It was a demonstration of how crisis can galvanise a community and how, with such a critical mission to undertake – the old divides melt away.
Wigan’s great divide, in a sporting sense, has always between its football and rugby league clubs, whose relationship has rarely been easy.
But Warriors fans stood with Latics as that hunt for the 54-year-old stretched to weeks. Both sides’ squads held up banners appealing for help and the head coaches of both sides – Latics’ Ryan Lowe and Warriors’ Matt Peet – used their media appearances to add their voices.
Darren’s body was eventually found in a river near the Brick Community Stadium the two teams share and on the day of his funeral, in April, the players of the football and rugby league squads lined up opposite each other to form a guard of honour for the cortege as it passed.
Wigan Athletic and Warriors players line the streets to pay their respects to Darren Orme
Wigan Athletic manager Ryan Lowe and defender Jason Kerr lay a wreath for Orme
‘It brought the two clubs closer than some fans told us they have ever felt,’ Sarah Guilfoyle, Latics managing director, tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘It showed how much more we can do together than apart.’
The connection was emblematic of the new relationship the two clubs are forming. They have just brought their communications and commercial operations into an open-plan space under the same roof at Warriors training base, next to the stadium. Fans buying tickets for Warriors’ home match against Castleford on Friday will be offered half-price tickets for the Latics’ League One match against Doncaster Rovers on the same pitch on Saturday.
The ‘Wigan Weekender’, as this new test initiative is being called, is a far remove from the long years of mutual suspicion between the two, fuelled in the 1980s by declarations about Athletic by the rugby league side’s chairman Maurice Lindsay which Latics fans found deeply patronising.
When Athletic secured a League Cup quarter-final against Leeds United, a big achievement for a club of such limited means, Lindsay told the BBC that the rugby league side had taken four times the number of people to Wembley than Athletic had for a Freight Rover Trophy final.
‘They’re a very successful, thriving little club and they’ve done almost everything right,’ said Lindsay, who died in 2022. ‘But they’ve chosen the back yard of rugby league to do it in.’
That interview became notorious: as much a part of an enmity that a generation of Athletic fans came to feel as Athletic being refused permission to play their League Cup tie against Liverpool at the rugby league side’s Central Park.
But both clubs are now owned by Mike Danson, a Wiganer and CEO of GlobalData, who is driving the collaboration between the two under the Wigan Sporting Group, more than a year after rescuing Athletic from the financial catastrophe of foreign ownership, which saw them hit by financial administration and three separate points deductions in five years. He wants the town, struggling economically, to benefit – viewing the two clubs as integral to the community and a shared sense of belonging.
‘We’re just trying to change the narrative gradually,’ says Guilfoyle, 27, who was promoted to the position from a previous role as head of football administration by Danson this summer and began her career at the club nine years ago, as academy secretary.
Warriors are the gold standard in rugby league – world champions in 2024 to add to their league leaders’ shield, Super League and Challenge Cup titles last year
Athletic meanwhile are in need of an injection of energy, having been League One’s lowest scorers last season
‘We previously operated in silos, and it makes no sense not to combine our resources and effort. This weekend is a gateway for people into the opposite sport. We don’t want to ram rugby down football fans’ throats.’
Warriors’ front-of-shirt sponsor is now carried on the back of the Athletic team’s jerseys. Athletic’s training kit sponsor added its name to the Warriors’ shorts last December. The women’s rugby league and football sides share a state-of-the-art new facility at Orrell.
At a joint public training session in July, Latics players attempted conversions, while the Warriors took penalties at Athletic goalkeeper Sam Tickle. The Latics players seem to have won that particular contest.
Athletic appear to have most gain in the short to medium term from collaborating with a Warriors side who are serial winners. Lowe will be at the Castleford game on Friday night, just as he was at their home match with Catalan Dragons in July, observing Peet and spending time with him after he match.
‘They’re so good in the culture of what they do and how they go about it and I want to learn,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘I’m looking up at Matt in the stand and watching his reactions, the coaches’ reactions, and the way they go about it.
‘I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, where I’d like them to come up here share stuff with us, and we go down there. Whether it’s working on set plays and them holding us and stopping us getting a free hit, or them marking us. Yes, it is a different type of football, but the environment and leadership skills can play a part in both teams.’
Lowe’s recruitment as head coach in March has contributed to a sense that Wigan Athletic are rising once again, after the wretched post Dave Whelan era, which saw the club collapse into financial administration and at one point carry a wage bill which was an alarming 146 per cent of turnover.
Last season, the club were one of the least attractive in League One, with the fewest goals scored and one of the lowest xGs in the division. Four of the first five players recruited this summer were strikers and winger Raphael Borges Rodrigues’ arrival on loan from Coventry City was part of the club’s pursuit of players under the FA’s Elite Significant Contribution visa system, which can help smaller clubs unearth overseas jewels.
The two clubs joined forces in July for a joint training session
While the rugby league stars took penalties, it was the footballers’ turn to kick goals – with Will Aimson trying his hand here
‘We want to find more of those kinds of players,’ Guilfoyle says. The club are also recruiting a head of data, to help capitalise on the insight that owner Danson’s company can bring.
Athletic can certainly accrue knowledge from the way Warriors have driven their commercial business to compensate for a £1million drop in TV money over five years. Corporate seats sell out for every Warriors game and average attendances at 17,500, up 2,500 on last season. Athletic are averaging around 10,000.
Warriors chief executive Kris Radlinski, who played for the club between 1993 and 2006, sees many ways of collaborating – though points out that the cultures of rugby league and football are very different.
‘Football is far more transactional,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘It’s a sport where selling a player for millions is celebrated – where we don’t want that. In football, players are far more of ‘an asset’ and loyalty isn’t celebrated as much. With the salary cap in our sport (£2.1m per club), squads are built on succession and 95 per cent of contracts are honoured.’
Guilfoyle sees aspects of the rugby league culture which she wants Athletic to pursue. ‘They have a really strong culture around involving the players’ families. We’re looking at that,’ she says.
Where once supporters might have been suspicious of such collaboration, Athletic fans looking for better things ahead welcome it.
‘Every excuse for hating the rugby lot is dead,’ says Jason Taylor of the Wigan Athletic Supporters Club, the group whose fighting fund raising more than £800,000 in the dark days.
‘We thought there might have been collaboration like this when Dave Whelan owned both clubs but then we were promoted to the Premier League and all the focus was on that. Even if this brings ten more fans to us, I would say it’s good.’
Fans buying tickets for Warriors’ home match against Castleford on Friday will be offered half-price entry to the Latics’ League One match against Doncaster on the same pitch on Saturday
Corporate seats sell out for every Warriors game and average attendances at 17,500, up 2,500 on last season
Athletic can definitely learn a lot from their cross-town rivals as they bid to get back to the Championship this season
The shared building that Athletic staff have crossed into is full of the all-conquering rugby league team’s motivational messages. But Lowe has his eye on the glittering trophy cabinet in the communal area where Peet holds his team meetings.
‘When Matt’s team had beaten Catalan Dragons, he didn’t seem happy with the performance, whereas for me, as a football manager, the performance doesn’t matter so much if we win, because we can get back to that,’ he says.
‘It showed they are tuned in to being the best. I hope in years to come when we’re in a different division I can say I want performances to match a win. We want their winning mentality. We want to mirror that, so everyone in this town can gain.’
References
- ^ Wigan Athletic (www.dailymail.co.uk)