Wigan Album

Ernie Ashcroft going for the line...I'm getting a dab hand at this...I know most of that great side captained by Martin Ryan...Eat your hearts out, Wigan fans...

Jarvo 'I know most of that great side captained by Martin Ryan...Eat your hearts out, Wigan fans...'
If you were a 'dab hand' you would know that most of the 'great sides' Martin Ryan played in were captained by Joe Egan

Scholes Malc: Didn't Martin ever captain them? And once again, are there any books written about these fine players?

Jarvo – cant recollect any individual books/life stories being printed apart from Billy B
A pity I know because I am sure they would all have a good tale to tell combining work with sport
Jim Sullivan’s story would have been quite remarkable
And as regards captaincy, in that era in the infrequent absence of Joe Egan the team, from photos which I have, would appear to be captained by Ernie Ashcroft

The problem is if anyone tried to write a biography of past players. Most of the people who knew them intimately are now dead. Making the research into their lives very difficult and time consuming. At the end of the day, how many today, who never saw them play, would be interested ???

Scholes Malc: Thanks for that info. Do you think that this era was the golden age of rugby league? They certainly had massive crowds down at Central Pak...I WOULD have watched these men...No danger!

They had big crowds those days Jarvo because it was a 'mans' thing to do on a Saturday, they used to work hard and play hard, slowly but surely over the years the female started to rule the roost and blokes started to go shopping on a Saturday with their wives. As a schoolboy i,ve played in curtain raisers on Central Park right up to 3-00 pm and there,s been 30,000 plus on the ground, the majority of PROFESSIONALS these days haven,t played in front of a crowd that big, never mind a bunch of 14/15 year olds. I still say it,s all about who wears the trousers, plus the price of a ticket, drink, etc definately doesn,t help.

You obviously don't get a Christmas Card from the WI or any of the womems lib , PC Groups Roy. If you haven't noticed, theres a good proportion of the crowd at the DW from fairer sex attending the modern game, although many of them look a little on the larger size these days than back in the 50's. Perhaps they were a little smaller then and you couldn't see them in the crowd. I don't know why so many of our macho young men strut their stuff round Wigan in T Shirts all winter, showing off their muscles, but can't be bothered either playing or watching Rugby. Games, an interst in sport and being competitive was always the thing at School back then. I blame the system and the "educators".

Yes Horace i agree that there are a few women make up the crowds these days, but there are more men walking round the town centres on a Saturday afternoon now than ever there was. Tell me the last time you went to a rugby league game that kicked off at 3-00 pm on a Sat afternoon, you probably cant and for me shopping was the original reason that the kick off times were moved to Friday evening and Sunday afternoon because attendances were falling and then television got involved and things went worse. You very rarely saw women at a match in the 40s and 50s, 20 to 30,000 men mostly, with their wives shopping on their own and then, liberation time!!.

Roy: Don't make excuses. Study the two photographs of Wigan fans on this Album section, and then decide. The real reason is this: the game is not a patch on how it used to be. Super League is a standing joke; nothing to do with women shopping...Most men leave them to it anyway...Women have always followed rugby and footy. It's my misfortune not to have married one...Humbug!

"the game is not a patch on how it used to be" I think a more accurate description is that the game is "significantly different to how it used to be played". Personally i find Super League a great game to watch and I'm in no way berating the great players who played League under different rules. Cream usually rises to the top and personally I think more or less the same great players would do well, no matter what changes were "enforced". If you listen to "hardened" old RU players they usually trot out the very same arguments "not a patch on how it was in my day lad" etc., etc.,

Hi Scholes Malc, I have the Billy B book but also the Cec Mountford one, "Kiwis, Wigan and the Wire". I particularly liked a sentence from the Preface by a lifelong Wigan supporter Richard Don Lewis, "Working down the mine during the week, the stoic pitmen, with limited time for training, had somehow found the fitness and the energy to face tough opposition on Saturdays, triumph time and time again and, incredibly, put Wigan squarely on the world map." While that may be a little too rosy a view, nevertheless it cannot be denied that the core of Wigan's success came from its native population with a fair smattering of talented imports from around the rugby globe and of course the many Welsh signings. Quite naturally Wigan born and bred such as myself like to see as many true Wiganers in the team as possible, with the everlasting proviso, that they are good enough.

Just to add a little more detail, this match was played on February 28th 1952, Wigan won by 25 points to 6. The player, in the distance, partly hidden by Ernie Ashcroft on his right, looks like Harry Street, and the player to his left is Jack Broome, the other Wigan player to Broome's left I don't recognise but it could be Brindle who only represented Wigan on 17 occasions.