PETER DEAKIN COLUMN (From Warrington Guardian)

PETER DEAKIN COLUMN

WE have been working on our ground capacity at Wilderspool for the past two months.

I am pleased to say now that through good negotiation, accommodation and working with the health and safety committee we've managed to raise the limit to 9,000 from 7,300.

This makes our target of 10,000 look so much closer now. And we have to hold 10,000 to fit in with Framing the Future and most importantly and politically we have to be up to that minimum level by the end of this season, as instructed by Super League. They are going to come down hard on clubs that don't reach the minimum figure.

The increased capacity has come at the Railway End, which tends to accommodate the travelling supporters. We are working towards the other 1,000 required capacity on other parts of the ground but we're not there yet. But the big achievement is that we have managed to raise the capacity very cost effectively and I can tip my hat to people who have worked hard here to make it happen.

We set the Bradford game as our target. It is our first 'real big' game at home and my feeling, subject to it being a semi-fine day, that 3,000 to 4,000 Bradford fans will make the journey.

With Bradford fans being really into their club they will all be wearing their team colours, it will be a great spectacle and there will be a lot of kids here looking for a nice big carnival type of atmosphere as we have done a massive kids promotion for this game.

There are some big things planned. We've now made the claim that our cheerleaders, the Warrington Starlites, are the best in the game. They'll get a chance to show the world on Sunday and they have been practicing a special routine for this game so the fans should look out for this one - make sure you're early and don't miss out!

I'm allowing the Bullettes to come here on a cheerleading capacity, to support their own club which is great because it means when we go away we can take our cheerleaders with us if we want to. I'm going to allow Bullman here too to have some fun with Wolfie.

I want it to be a big carnival type day. In my opinion, this is the way the game should be going and we should all try and promote this carnival type atmosphere rather than an aggressive type one. A carnival kind of show promotes a lot of fun and helps to promote new fans to come and have a look at the club for the first time and create a new generation of fans. This is the whole idea of it all.

I thought our fans were superb at Wigan for two thirds of the game. I know there were a lot of taunts from the Wigan fans and unfortunately, because of their disgusting chants, our supporters rose to the bait. We started abusing their fans and had a go at the referee as well. Make no mistake, I have contacted Wigan this week and I have let them know that I am not happy about them not making any effort at all to do something about their fans chanting obscenities towards our fans.

I am hoping that this Sunday will see a clean slate again. The big thing is for supporters to remember that there will be hundreds and hundreds of kids at the game and the appeal is for supporters to behave themselves. I love passion and I want the fans to shout and scream and do whatever they have to as long as it is controlled. We've got to get away from the vile language. I have a duty and responsibility to the fair-minded fans in Warrington who do not want to listen to the obscenities coming out from chants. We are not a soccer club. This is a Rugby League club and we want to make it a civilised area for people to come and have a good time and enjoy themselves.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.