The paltry crowd that watched Wigan v Hull told us a lot about the FA Cup, but also about football in Wigan
Dave Whelan, the Wigan Athletic chairman, does not look like the kind of man who would want our sympathy. In fact I doubt the former Blackburn Rovers full-back turned multimillionaire entrepreneur, who comes across as part bombastic Bradley Hardacre, part hardboiled NYPD precinct captain with a bottle of vivid pink stomach calmer permanently at hand, will let the attendance for the Cup match against Hull City at the stadium that bears his initials spoil his annual Barbados sojourn. But a crowd of 5,335 for an all‑Premier League third-round tie, even if Lancashire was positively Siberian for the day, is nothing short of feeble.
Condemning Wigan feels like stamping on Bambi in hob-nailed boots. And their supporters would argue that other top-flight clubs – Aston Villa, Sunderland, Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers – all saw five-figure drops from their average gates on Saturday. This may well reflect the contemptuous and lily-livered approach to the competition from managers who bang on about the league being their bread and butter and being unable to afford the luxury of a Cup-run distraction. But surely a distraction is a good thing – the poor man’s version of sunning themselves in the Caribbean, away from the everyday struggle to survive? The Cup should matter to middle-of-the-road sides as well as those on skid row precisely because it does not matter and offers a rare chance to play without a millstone around their necks.
It may be naive to say supporters should not be seduced by chief executive-speak and repeat the mantra that all that counts is staying in the Premier League. It matters financially and in some ways it works if all you want to do is see better teams playing at your home ground every other week and accept a blue-moon victory over wealthier opposition as the height of your hopes. But what does it do to the soul? If you got your job at 18 and said your only ambition was to stay in that same position until you retired, people would say you were crazy. Not cautious, not sheepish, nor unpretentious but servile, chicken-hearted and demonstrably barmy. The first weekend in January every year offers the chance to these clubs to put their weaselly fears to one side, just for one day. It is not pragmatism that makes them pass up the opportunity but cynicism and cowardice.
The phenomenon does not necessarily apply to Wigan this year. After all they comfortably beat Hull’s second string, albeit with six line-up changes of their own. Such a huge fall in their regular attendance, however, suggests either that the £15 admission price was too steep for a dismayed fanbase after a 5-0 thrashing at Old Trafford and that the true size of hardcore Latics is negligible, or that Whelan rebuilt his home town club on barren soil with no real history, culture or constituency to fall back on.
Despite the television money and largesse of a benefactor that allows clubs to maintain Premier League status, do not let anyone tell you that the size of a crowd does not matter. Other clubs have had atrocious turn-outs before – the Wimbledon v Everton match at Selhurst Park on a January Tuesday in 1993 drew 3,039 through the turnstiles but they had the bona fide excuses of being exiled from Plough Lane and, well, being Wimbledon. In May 1966 Arsenal played Leeds on a Thursday at Highbury and were watched by 4,554 people. The ludicrous scheduling did not help but many also stayed away in protest at Billy Wright’s woeful management of the London club. So eerie was the experience, Frank McLintock says, that the sound of the traffic on Holloway Road was louder than the fans. Wright was sacked within the week.
Of course, crowds were the economic lifeblood of a club back then but they remain what separates the European elite and sides that have reasonable aspirations to join them from those with no prospects whatsoever. They also provide a reliable gauge of a club’s vibrancy and illuminate in cases like Wigan’s when we are dealing with a chimera. Chelsea and Manchester City are pilloried for being boosted by the opulent spending of their owners but critics who vilify those clubs prefer to see Wigan as a romantic small-town story when, in truth, it’s just the same only on a smaller scale.
Ultimately, perhaps, the real lesson of the weekend is not that the FA Cup is dead but that the town of Wigan, a rugby league stronghold, will never be alive for football. In Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson famously persuades the Iowan farmer to carve out a baseball diamond in his cornfield with the words “build it and he will come”. He wouldn’t have bothered if he had been a Wiganer.
FA CupWigan AthleticHull CityRob Bagchiguardian.co.uk
