Wigan Athletic showed ample amounts of generosity on two fronts over the past few days. After gifting Spurs nine goals in their disastrous defeat at White Hart Lane, the Wigan players felt sufficiently embarrassed to offer refunds to all of their travelling fans.
This goes some way to contradicting stereotypical views of footballers and their selfish ways. Hopefully, this will encourage other players to think more about their committed fans rather than the size of their bank balances.
However, to put things in perspective, the Spurs fans at the match were chanting to the travelling Wigan fans “What time’s your mini-bus?”, thus suggesting a minimal amount of travelling fans will need to be reinbursed by the players.
It will be interesting to see if the Wigan team put together a better display at home against Sunderland this weekend – and, if there’s any repeat of the Spurs debacle this season, whether the players refund the fans again.
By Simon Roche on November 25th, 2009
Tags: Barclays Premier League, Football
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In yesterday’s Times, Tom Dart highlighted a wonderful related anecdote. Back in 1988, Flamengo of Brazil promised their fans a refund if they lost their next home game. 52,000 fans turned up, and Flamengo lost. The attendance at the previous home game was 791. A Wigan fan also recounted the current joke he’s getting from rival fans: “What time is it?” “It’s nearly ten past Chris Kirkland” (Kirkland being Wigan’s keeper). Here’s the article: http://bit.ly/86QsKo