Wigan Athletic finished in second place in the Northern Premier League in the 1977/78 season, behind winners Boston United. But as Boston's ground and facilities did not meet the Football League criteria for a League club, whereas Springfield Park did, Wigan Athletic were put forward for election to the league. There was no automatic promotion to the Football League until 1987, and at that time a club had to be 'voted out' of the League to allow a non-league team to be promoted in their place. At the end of the 1977/78 season, Southport finished next to bottom of the old Fourth Division, and faced off with Wigan Athletic for their place in the League. The first round of voting was tied, with both clubs receiving 26 votes. After a tense re-vote which Wigan controversially won 29–20, Southport lost their place in the Fourth Division and Wigan Athletic became an English League club on 2 June 1978.
In the club's first season of League football, Wigan Athletic finished in sixth place, just six points off promotion and playing in front of an average crowd of 6,701.Two more top-half finishes came in the following seasons. They gained their first Football League promotion under the management of former Liverpool player Larry Lloyd in 1981/82, when a points tally of 91 saw them join the former Division Three for the first time, beginning a 10 year spell in English football's third tier. The club struggled in their first season in Division Three, which led to Lloyd's controversial sacking in early 1983, being replaced by Harry McNally. Under McNally's management, the club stabilised in Division Three and secured a pair of mid-table finishes, but a dreadful 1984/85 season cost him his job, with Tranmere manager Bryan Hamilton stepping into the breach. Under Hamilton's management, the club's performances went to the next level and they won their first silverware as a League club that season with the Freight Rover Trophy. They were beaten in the Northern Final of the same competition the following season by Bolton Wanderers. More importantly, Hamilton achieved Division Three survival, which had looked an impossible task earlier that season.
The 1985/86 season saw a marked improvement in the club's league form, eventually finishing in fourth position, a then-club record high which would stand for 17 years until 2002/03. Wigan finished the season just one point outside the promotion places in the final season before the Football League introduced the play-off system for promotion and relegation. However, Hamilton's feats attracted the attention of First Division Leicester City and he left to become their manager in the summer 1986. His assistant, Ray Mathias, who had followed him from Tranmere, stepped up to the Wigan manager's job. Wigan managed an identical fourth place finish in the 1986/87 season, but this time were rewarded with the chance to compete for the final promotion place in the new play-off system. (In the first two years of the play-off system, teams finishing 3rd, 4th and 5th joined the team finishing 20th in the division above to play off for the promotion place; this was changed to the teams finishing 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th from the 1988/89 season). The Latics lost at the two-legged semi-final stage to Swindon, who went on to win the final promotion place.
The fourth place finishes of the 1985/86 and 1986/87 seasons proved to be the high points of Wigan Athletic's first stint in Division 3. For the next five years, they finished mid-table, flirting with relegation in 1988–89 (at which time Mathias was sacked and previous manager Bryan Hamilton returned) and 1989/90, until they were relegated for the first and only time in the club's League history in 1992/93. Wigan Athletic finished in 23rd place, amid tumbling attendances which had fallen from averages of 3,000–4,000 in Wigan Athletic's Division 3 years to just 2,593 in 1992/93. A year later, with the club back in the fourth tier of the English League, the Latics finished 19th – fourth from bottom – to complete their worst-ever league season. Attendances fell to a lowest-ever Wigan Athletic League average of 1,845 by 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment