This whole subject is so bloody boring but perhaps so bloody predictable.
Right at the beginning of all this, some people said we'd regret letting Whelan tie us to that football club. So many people had reservations about that guy, but our constant and costly success (not to mention the collapsing coal mine under the new stand!) ensured that in the end we needed his money. And at first it seemed okay. All the time that Latics were punching above their weight in the Premier League it felt safe. The halfwits among their fans made constant empty threats about chucking us out of a stadium we had a cast-iron contract on, but the reality was that their success was paying for our new home. However, it wouldn't have taken a genius to recognise that this was never going to last. Latics were going to be okay for as long as Whelan, who was already an old man, was there to pay the bills.
How long did anyone really think they'd last in the fantasy world of top-level football, where simply fielding a team for a couple of months costs the equivalent of fielding a SL squad for several seasons, without a sugar-daddy so enamoured by his final project that he'd flush money down the toilet to keep it afloat?
Every time I see this subject come up on these forums it drives me mad that Wigan RL, who under IL have been an efficient, well-run club and the winners of much silverware without any silly overspending, still appear to be joined at the hip to this football club who are clearly finished in the upper flight (even if they don't realise that) and are likely to leave us having to run the whole stadium on our own, or worse.
I've changed my views re Wigan Athletic a dozen times in the last two decades. First I thought them an irritant (mainly because of their delusional idiot fans). Then, when Whelan took over, I saw them as an actual threat. Then, when it became obvious that he had no legal power to evict us from the stadium, I started to see how the arrangement suited us. Then, when he was gone and they'd crashed out of the top flight and suddenly we were under IL's control and winning stuff again, I didn't mind them at all.
Now though, Latics' inevitable problems appear to have become our problem too. I'm not going to pretend that I know the ins and outs of this mess they're in or what it means for us, but the uncertainty it's causing for Wigan RL is intensely aggravating. I'm taking comfort from the fact that our officials seem very calm about it all, but at present it's really difficult not thinking that all those years ago, Wiganers who warned against letting Dave Whelan anywhere near Wigan RL were really, really onto something.
