25 Years since Leaving Springfield Park | Paul Rowley's Memories

Paul Rowley looks back at his experiences of visiting Wigan Athletic's former home, Springfield Park

• Leaving Springfield Park | Paul Rowley's Memories of our old home
• Former BBC Political Correspondent Paul Rowley looks back at his experiences of visiting Springfield Park
• Latics moved to their current home in August 1999, having played their final game at Springfield Park on 15 May 1999

It’s 25 years this month since Wigan Athletic left Springfield Park, our home since our formation in 1932.  Most of the time we were in the non-league, but we spent more than 20 years there after our election to the Football League in 1978. Former BBC Political Correspondent Paul Rowley, a Season Ticket Holder as a schoolboy and subsequently a regular in the press box both at Springfield and the DW, looks back…

 I spent most of my adolescence there. I covered my first game on the radio there and made my national TV debut there as well.  So, I’ve got a lot of affection for the old place.

SAINTS MARCH OUT 

It all started on Saturday 30 March 1968 when this 13-year-old went through the turnstiles at Springfield Park for my first proper football match.  It was all down to my cousin Derek Floyd who was 10 years older than me. Derek, who’d played for the junior sides at Manchester City, had joined Wigan Athletic as a semi-professional, mostly playing for the reserves. But he’d been called up to the first team for what sounded like “the big local derby”, Wigan versus St Helens. So, I went along to give family support. Having been born in Ashton-in-Makerfield – halfway between the two towns – I was aware of the intensity between the two Rugby League clubs when they met every Boxing Day and Good Friday. But this was St Helens Town of the Lancashire Combination, and we were in the Cheshire League. The occasion was the semi-final of the Lancashire JUNIOR Cup, one of the oldest competitions in non-league football. Even then it struck me as odd to give the cup such an inferior name. Shortly afterwards, it was re-christened the Lancashire Challenge Trophy. 

The ground looked to be massive. My first sight as I walked down Woodhouse Lane was of four giant floodlights arching onto the skyline. It cost a tanner (that’s two and a half pence these days) to get in. There didn’t seem to be much terracing other than a kind of pink sandstone slate on either side of the area where the players came out. Most kids of my age seemed to congregate on a grass verge behind the goal at the “Shevington End” (or the “Shevvy End” as it was known) if we were kicking that way. And then they’d switch to the “Town End” at half time. I spoke to Derek before the match. He was listed in the programme in the Number 6 shirt, a position then known as “left-half”. Unfortunately, he was “left out” that day, so my first footballing experience appeared to be something of an anti-climax even before it began.

By all accounts, I’d chosen the worst match of the season to walk through the door. Top scorer Bert Llewellyn scored the only goal in what was his last season at the club. Bert, like Derek, was from Golborne and was a local legend, bagging 140 goals for us in 185 appearances, only bettered by his regular co-striker Harry Lyon (273 goals) our record goalscorer, who for some reason was operating in defence at the time, but soon became my football hero. For both, this was a disappointing campaign with the club finishing in eighth place behind Mossley, Witton Albion, and Tranmere Rovers. That’s Tranmere Rovers RESERVES. It was also the first game for manager Alan Sanders, who lasted just 32 days, though he did sign five players in that time, including Ian Gillibrand who a decade later led out the team at Hereford United in our first game in the Football League.  

INTO THE PREMIER LEAGUE … THE NORTHERN ONE

But for some reason, I was hooked, and I decided to use my pocket money to buy a season ticket for our first season in the newly formed Northern Premier League. It was a good investment. Admission prices had quadrupled (!) to two shillings (10p), and for ‘thirty bob’ (£1.50) I could see 19 first-team games and a similar number of reserve matches. Most of my mates at St John Rigby Grammar School at Orrell thought I was mad. Within a twenty-mile radius, you could watch Manchester United (European Cup winners that year), Manchester City (First Division champions), Liverpool or Everton, all of them lifting both the League title and the FA Cup in the 1960s. Some of my pals were regulars at Central Park. The school had a large catchment area, and we had more boys there who watched Chorley than Wigan Athletic. But over the next five years, I only missed one home league game, a 3-2 victory over Altrincham after I’d been off school for a week with a heavy cold. By the weekend I’d recovered, but my mum was worried that one of my teachers (Mr Draper, still a regular at the DW) would be there, and might question why I wasn’t at home, so I was forced to miss it.

I also started a scrapbook, keeping match reports and feature articles from the Wigan Observer the Saturday night Evening Post, and Chronicle Pink. After most home games, I waited outside the entrance with my autograph book, getting players from both sides to sign programmes, newspaper photographs, and football magazines. Usually, I was the only one there. There was barely a mention in the national newspapers except when we faced a Football League club in the FA Cup.  Our longest cup tie was a First Round marathon in 1969 with Fourth Division leaders Port Vale. It ended in a second replay at Old Trafford, and we were beaten 1-0 in the last minute of extra-time after draws at both Springfield and Vale Park. That season we started in the First Qualifying Round, so we ended up playing nine games, more than we managed in 2013 when we won the thing. 

KEN THE PEN

We progressed further the following season when we managed to see off another Fourth Division side in a Second Round clash at Springfield. The stylish Jim Fleming stroked home a penalty against Peterborough United in the final minute to win 2-1 in front of a rapturous crowd of more than 17,000. It resulted in a Third Round tie on 2 January 1971 at Manchester City in our first televised game on the BBC’s Match Of The Day. England midfielder Colin Bell scored the only goal at Maine Road after our keeper Dennis Reeves couldn’t clear the ball properly after his boot split! Ask any Latics fan in the 46,212 crowd that cold day and they’ll more than likely remember (or even sing) the names of the starting XI : Reeves, Turner, Sutherland, Milne, Coutts, Gillibrand, Temple, Todd, Davies, Fleming, Oates.  That season Gordon Milne’s side lifted the Northern Premier League title for the first time, losing only two league games. But in what became almost an annual ritual, we were denied a place in the Fourth Division that summer at the annual general meeting of the Football League. Chairman Ken Cowap’s decision to leave a £2 personalised Parker pen on the table in front of each of the 92 voting representatives backfired spectacularly, with the club receiving just 14 votes. From thereon in, he was known as “Ken The Pen”.  I wonder if any of the clubs kept one of those pens. They’d be a brilliant exhibit for the Wigan Athletic Heritage Project.                 

Many supporters, me included, thought we’d never make it to the Football League. It felt like a closed shop to northern sides, with the only teams elected coming from the Southern League such as Cambridge United in 1970 at the expense of Bradford Park Avenue, and Hereford United in 1972 replacing Barrow. Struggling northern sides who were regularly in the basement like Rochdale, Halifax Town, Hartlepool United and Workington seemed to be regularly re-elected under what was known as the “Old Pals’ Act” where existing clubs would vote for one another to maintain the status quo. Long-held antagonism from the footballing establishment towards our predecessors Wigan Borough, who resigned from the Third Division North in 1931 without completing their fixtures, may have been another factor. 

CHANGING TIMES

Indirectly, though, watching non-league soccer every week meant I was becoming something of an expert in the semi-professional game, along with around 3,000 others at Springfield Park, including knowledgeable fans such as Brian Sabin, Jack Sudworth, Jeff Rourke and Harold Ashurst. In 1972, I wrote to the club secretary Derek Fuller bemoaning the lack of coverage in the local media of our reserve side. Derek, who had a great flair for public relations, published it in the match programme. So, I followed it up with other letters, all of which were duly printed. When I was taking my A-Levels in 1973, I applied to join the journalism course at Preston Polytechnic. Fortunately, I was interviewed by Ian Hargreaves, the Managing Editor of the Sefton Newspaper series, based in Southport. He was impressed with my knowledge of the non-league scene, put me on the course, and at the end of it offered me a job as a news reporter on the Bootle Times, with the bonus that I also covered Bootle in their first year in the Lancashire Combination.  

Three months later in the autumn of 1974, Liverpool’s first commercial station Radio City opened, and in the first week, I was on air, just out of my teens, covering non-league football for them. On 14 December, I had the great honour of reporting live on the radio when we played Fourth Division leaders Mansfield Town in the Second Round of the FA Cup.  But there was no press box as such, and the only telephone in the Phoenix Stand was jealously guarded by the local news agency. So, my reports came not from Springfield Park, but from the Springfield HOTEL! It meant I had to make a 200-yard sprint every 15 minutes to file from the payphone of the local boozer. And they say journalists spend too much time in pubs! Thankfully, I didn’t miss any of the goals as Brian Tiler’s side drew 1-1, losing the replay 3-1 two days later.

THE LEAGUE – AT LAST!

Four years later, I was in heaven. Not only was my team in the Football League, but I was covering them home and away on Radio City, which I’d joined full-time the previous year. I travelled on the team coach for our goalless debut at Hereford and waited optimistically for our first home game against Grimsby Town on 23 August 1978. This time, there was a proper press box at the back of the stand although the windows were rarely cleaned, so identifying players in the penalty box was often difficult. Sadly, on the night we crashed to a 3-0 defeat, and missed a penalty. A month in, we were propping up the Fourth Division, but somehow Ian McNeill’s side turned it around to end our first season in a creditable sixth position.

In 1982, we gained promotion to the Third Division under Larry Lloyd, beating Mansfield Town 3 -1 with a hat-trick from Eamonn O’Keefe. By then, I was Radio City’s Local Government Editor, but at weekends I worked on Granada TV’s Match Night, which covered the game. In 1985, I made my national television debut from Springfield Park on ITV’s “World Of Sport” with the legendary Dickie Davies. Unfortunately, we lost 5-0 to Chelsea in an FA Cup Third Round replay with Kerry Dixon hitting four of them. We dropped back into the fourth tier in 1993, finishing in the bottom four a year later. But the arrival of Dave Whelan in 1995 changed everything. John Deehan leading us to the Division Three title in 1997, and shortly afterward, plans were announced for the £30 million state-of-the-art JJB Stadium. Geographically, it was just a mile away, but philosophically it was light years from the rusting hulk of Springfield. 

THE END … OR MAYBE NOT 

Wigan Athletic played their last league game at the old place on Saturday 8 May 1999. By then, I’d moved to the BBC and put together a special feature about the place for Five Live. BBC GMR (now Radio Manchester) broadcasted it in the build-up to the game, and I was welling up in the press box listening to it. A special match programme was produced to mark the occasion. As a mark of respect, I walked to the ground, retracing the steps I’d taken 31 years earlier as a schoolboy. Ray Mathias’ side finished on a high, beating Chesterfield 3-1 with two late goals from Stuart Barlow after Andy Liddell had given us the lead. Unexpectedly, promotion contenders Bournemouth could only draw 0-0 with Wrexham, which meant we sneaked into the final Play-Off position for the first time during the campaign.

In many respects, it was typical Wigan. It seemed we were reluctant to leave home. Fans thinking of walking off with a memento of “Springy” had to wait for another week. But we had to face the side who finished in third place, a certain Manchester City, in their only season at this level. For us, the prize was a potential place in football’s second tier for the first time. On 15 May,  that dream looked possible with Stuart Barlow giving us the lead after just EIGHTEEN SECONDS following a defensive slip-up. But Paul Dickov equalised late on with the last goal scored at the old place. In the second leg, City won 1-0 with a goal from Shaun Goater. or “the hand of Goat” as it became known, with video evidence suggesting the striker pushed the ball into the net. Joe Royle’s side went on to win promotion at Wembley, beating Gillingham on penalties after the sides were level after extra time. A year later, the Gills beat us 3-2 after extra time in our only Play-Off Final at the end of our first year in the new stadium.

LEGACY 

The legacy at Springfield Park was impressive. In 40 seasons in non-league, we lifted four Cheshire League championships, four Lancashire Combination titles, while twice winning the Northern Premier League, and reaching the FA Trophy Final (1973). Add to that 11 Lancashire Junior Cups / Challenge Trophies, two Cheshire League Cups, two Lancashire Combination Cups, one Northern Premier League Cup, three Northern Premier League Shields, six  Liverpool Senior Non-League Cups (plus one shared), three Lancashire Floodlit Cups, the Northern Floodlit League, the Northern Floodlit League Cup, the Ashworth Trophy, and numerous Makerfield Cups, an annual tournament between us and Cromptons Recs, an engineering factory in Ashton. We only had one relegation in non-league, finishing bottom of the Cheshire League in 1947, and dropping into the Lancashire Combination, which we won the following season. As a Football League club we had two promotions (1982, 1997) and one relegation (1993), lifting the Division Three title (1997), the Freight Rover Trophy (1985), and the Auto Windscreens Shield (1999), plus the Lancashire Manx Cup (1984), and the Isle of Man Festival (1987). Plus for many of us … a thousand dreams and the odd heartache.

MOVING HOME 

The official opening of the JJB was on Wednesday 4 August 1999 when we lost 2-0 to Manchester United, a game I was privileged to cover. The previous Sunday we had a dry run, with a goalless draw against Morecambe. For sentiment’s sake, I drove to Springfield Park beforehand to look at the old place. But it was gone. Less than three months after the final game, the construction of a new housing estate was already underway. I couldn’t find the centre spot, but I did see Lyon Road, fittingly named after my first Latics hero Harry Lyon, who died in 1984, aged just 47.

Here’s an oddity. Of the 1,321 league games at Springfield Park, only one wasn’t played there. On 2 May 1970, we ended our second Northern Premier League season seemingly on course to finish runners-up to Macclesfield, as we did in the previous campaign. Our pitch wasn’t in a great state, and an early start was needed to reseed it. So, the club decided to move the final match against South Shields to Chorley, which we won 2-0. That day Macc became the first winners of the FA Trophy with a 2-0 victory at Wembley over Telford United. Because of fixture congestion, our fiercest rivals had a week to complete their three remaining fixtures and only needed a point to make certain of the championship. But they lost the lot, including a 3-1 away defeat - also against South Shields – on the last day. It meant that we missed out on the title on goal average by a staggering 0.006 of a goal! I always reckon if we had played our final game at Springfield, we’d probably have scored a third goal and would thus have been champions. But Gordon Milne’s side made up for it the following season by lifting the NPL title for the first time.

WIGAN ATHLETIC - THE SPRINGFIELD PARK HOME RECORD 

DIVISION	SEASONS	PLAYED	WON	DRAWN	LOST	FOR	AGAINST	POINTS
CHESHIRE LEAGUE	16	334	240	43	51	1072	385	523
LANCASHIRE COMBINATION	14	289	188	50	51	737	321	426
NORTHERN PREMER LEAGUE	10	219	142	52	25	437	159	336
FOOTBALL LEAGUE FOURTH TIER	8	180	102	38	40	308	189	304
FOOTBALL LEAGUE THIRD TIER	13	299	152	68	79	475	305	524
TOTAL	61	1321	824	251	246	3029	1359	2113

This relates to home league games for Wigan Athletic between 1932 and 1999. It doesn’t include away games, cup matches, friendlies, the Football League play-offs, or games during the Second World War. 

It includes a “home” game with South Shields in the Northern Premier League on 2 May 1970 which was played at Chorley while Springfield Park was being reseeded. Throughout our non-league years, teams were awarded two points for a win, and one for a draw. The rules changed at the start of the 1981/ 82 season, Wigan’s fourth season in the Football League, when three points were awarded for a win. Thanks to Wigan Athletic Heritage Project Chairman Jeff Rourke for help in compiling this graphic.