One of my old school friends has just posted some images online from an exhibition he's involved with in Wigan, including the photo below taken outside Central Park rugby league ground in the early eighties.
My grandmother grew up with her uncle and auntie in a pub in Wigan, and after he died worked with her in a sweet shop near Central Park which later became a souvenir shop for the rugby league club. As kids in the seventies, we visited the sweet shop and then walked into the ground through an open exit gate and stood on the empty terraces.
So many questions spring to mind when looking at the photo of the people enjoying a free, if obstructed, view of the pitch: can they no longer afford to pay for admission to the ground at the turnstiles? (unemployment was rising sharply then, especially in the North West); have they stopped to watch the whole match, or just briefly on the way to or from somewhere else, like the guy on the bike?; has the yellow plastic traffic cone just fallen over in the road, or been kicked over for some reason?; what do the spectators on the adjacent terracing think of those watching the action for nothing?
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