Opinion: Relegation is a more sombre chapter in our history

Last updated : 15 May 2013 By Paul Farrington

...and also reaching two major cup finals, culminating in the FA Cup Final success last weekend.

Relegation is simply a more sombre chapter in the story of Wigan Athletic.

Unfortunately the club we support has been relegated after a very poor season in the Premiership. The players will know it, the manager will know it and eventually we - the supporters - will realise that our club wasn't good enough to stay up this year.

As Sir Winston Churchill said: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

This is not a doom and gloom story about relegation, but instead a positive look at the return to the Wigan Athletic that many of us first fell in love with.

We may not have dropped out of the league structure altogether but relegation certainly hurts, and it will continue to hurt for the next three months over a painful summer period.

There will be the usual stream of plonkers, idiots and even the occasional inbred onto the message board to try and tell us that our club is rubbish, useless and poorly supported. But these are the exact supporters who would jump ship if their club suffered the fate that ours has this season.

Some people will get their pleasures from stomping on our dreams, but they will never understand what it feels to have a love for your football club that goes deeper than success.

Manchester United can keep their league titles, Chelsea can keep their money, Liverpool can keep their European Cups and Arsenal can keep their glorious new stadium, for I am a Wigan Athletic supporter and there is no substitute for that.

Wigan Athletic supporters are a different breed. We have followed our club up through the league structure and been ridiculed for doing so, relegation is simply a minor disappointment.

Many players will leave to chase larger pay packets, many new players will arrive with a burning desire to get promotion, and there will be the return of the journeys to Blackpool, Bolton, Blackburn and of course the much loved trek to see the Tractor Boys in Ipswich.

It is at this humbling time you realise just why you follow our magnificent football club. For-ever laughed at in the school playground for dreaming of being Harry Lyon, or Greame Jones. For not wearing the latest United kit. For not supporting the most successful team in the land. And all for the love of your home-town club, Wigan Athletic.

Our club is like no other in the land, it is wholly unique and has a history to be proud of. Above all we have a quaint humility that can only be envied by all the money saddled, glory chasing, global giants that dominate the top flight.

The Premier League was certainly a fantastic journey and there is no doubt in my mind that our club will return. For the meantime however we remain among our companions of recent times in the Championship. We will face the fresh challenges, renewed rivalries and hopefully success that relegation will bring.


I'd like to quote Saint Augustine when I say "Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility."

And at the end of it all we can say who we are, we know what our football club is to us, and we will be there next year to cheer the team on.

We are Proud, we are Humble, we are Wigan Athletic.