Pre Season Tour Pt 2

A saturday pre season trip to the Steel City to see the Latics play Sheffield Wednesday

Right this was serious,a Saturday road trip across the M62 to one of the oldest clubs in existence. Wednesday were formed as the Wednesday in 1867 by a group of apprentices who could only get Wednesday afternoon off to play. They have been one of the biggest clubs in the game and although they have struggled of late and have had to sell their best players over recent years, they still attract bigger gates than their more successful rivals in recent years, the Blades of Sheffield United.

Sheffield is like Rome. What you may say? Well like Rome its built on seven hills, it has two fircely partisan football clubs and both Wednesday and Lazio have featured the mercurial Paulo Di Canio in their ranks. T

hats where the similarities end i’m afraid, you won’t find the Colosseum (unless you count Hillsborough which does appear quite old!)and the climate is vastly inferior.

I have to confess to having an affinity for the Owls. I have a cousin who is a season ticket holder there and they have been my second team for many years. They also play in Blue and White stripes which caused not a small degree of confusion yesterday when trying to find the enternace to the away end.

In the end I had to ask and felt a chill when the steward told me to go to the Leppings Lane enterance. This was of course the area where 96 Liverpool fans were tragically killed on the 15th of April 1989 prior to their F.A.Cup semi final against Nottingham Forest. This was one of the main catalysts for all seater stadiums and of course Wednesday now fits the criteria for a modern football stadia.

The main talk in the Latics end was whether Zaki would play and whether there would be any sign of Koumas. The answers were of course Yes and No repsectively. Zaki as reported previously was superb and should be the answer to our goal scoring problems. Why Koumas hasn’t featured in any of our five friendlies so far is anybodies guess. Looking at the squad it would appear he will be fourth choice winger behing De Ridder, Kapo and Valencia.

It was a good workout agaisnt a lively Wednesday side and the step up in quality of the Wigan side was there for all to see.

Yesterday was also the debut of the new away kit. The best way to describe the shirt is that it resembles a chocolate lime sweetie with its lime green colour.

Mrs B who has a dress sense unlike me commented that she couldn’t see us selling many replica shirts and I reckon she is right.

The away following was good,a round 700 unlike the figure quoted on the offical site. It was very good humoured although there was a complaint in the Gents loos that the pies were really good last time he went there( last time we played there was 1975)and the nearest good pie was in Glossop.

Vital fooball was well represented again and I had the opportunity to meet up with Bryan Plumb , his wife and his new flag.

I am now looking forward to part three which is the Hibs trip