The new Wigan library -- BBC*

The media have once again turned the club into a laughing stock. Sure, Latics fans know full well that this weekend’s Fulham contest had the club’s single best home attendance of the season (80% of all seats sold out – not bad for a non-Saturday match against a London club) and the number of Wigan supporters at each game has been steadily rising, but this clearly isn’t good enough for the mainstream media.

They continue to focus on the 150-odd away fans that made the short and relatively inexpensive 200-mile trip north on a Sunday just to make the point that nobody watches Little Wigan or Little Fulham. That would normally be just about tolerable, except in this instance the atmosphere and support just so happened to be so good you didn’t notice. Not one news source cared to point that out.

All they are interested in is figures, and the bottom line is that this was the lowest attended match of the season. Oh really? Does that really matter in the grand scheme of things? Supporters that care about the football and not sensationalism will know that it isn’t particularly, but if there’s a story to be had, then the BBC will pounce upon it for the purposes of  ‘entertainment’. As a result, Wigan are the subject of some undeserved and totally unwarranted stick. It’s just furthering the media characterisation of the club as some irrelevant small-town, second-rate outfit run by a raving old loony.

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Let it be known I have absolutely nothing against these brave Fulham fans.

I’m not usually one to complain (at least not officially), but regarding the BBC’s coverage of yesterday’s Wigan-Fulham match I thought “why the heck not?” It couldn’t hurt, could it? Well, at least I’ve never heard of anybody being tracked down and beaten by Huw Edwards with a leather belt as a result of a complaint.

After reading a piece over at VitalLatics by Worbo, my grumbling juices began to flow and I guess you could say it was that article that pushed me over the edge and compelled me to vent my spleen here at JWAW. I wasn’t gonna, but, y’know, it seemed a good idea at the time.

This ‘rant’, if you will, is almost entirely prompted by the aforementioned. The following ‘moaning old codger’-style attack is the result of twenty minutes’ spare time and a grudge against a general top-four bias in the modern media.

I thought it turned out alright for a poorly proofread spur-of-the-moment gripefest, so I decided to kill two Alan Hansens with one Alan Shearer and turn it into a proper complaint as well as a blog entry. As with most of my posts, please don’t take the whole thing entirely seriously, as although I make one or two good points I’ve embellished them with hyperbole just a touch.

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