Wigan, 8 November, 2008

Off, then, to Wigan for time first time this season. A morning kick-off, which in best swings and roundabouts fashion means a) the motorways are clear, b) I'm bleary-eyed before I start to use them.
Getting ordered to write a feature with a deadline of "now; but you don't have to write it while you're driving" on the way up merely adds to the fun of the fair, as did leaving a computer lead stuck to the wall at home. I worry sometimes. Normal people don't leave their computer leads at home do they? I've never known anybody in any press box do it and it's my (roughly: I've genuinely lost count) six time.
I write said feature in my head on the M6, sprint around the industrial estate next to the JJB Stadium to find a lead (hats off to Maplins and their post young-offenders-institutions staff) and craft 800 words out there and then. The world being unjust and unfair, those may not win the Pulitzer Prize, but I'll bet Maureen Dowd has never had to be non-libellously funny about Craig Bellamy while driving past Norton Cranes services.
Wigan Athletic's game against Stoke City is spectacularly and predictably ghastly and ends without a goal. Stoke existed only not to concede and, in that they were undeniably successful. Wigan slumbered through the first hour, then created a few chances and never looked like scoring. The man from the Mail On Sunday talked about his World War II book (presumably it's a contractual obligation that anyone who writes for the Mail On Sunday must have written a book about World War II; although it's now OK to be on the Allied side apparently); the man from the New Of The World talked about rugby league and I talked about computer leads. It was as if the Algonquin Round Table had reconvened. I once stayed at the Algonquin - opposite the much nicer Royalton - by the way. All their tables are round.
Afterwards, Wigan's sweary but realistic Steve Bruce suggests it'll be the last game on Match Of The Day (it was). Nobody can think of anything interesting to ask him apart from how Emile Heskey's hamstring is bearing up.
Stoke's Tony Pulis bangs on about spirit and commitment and he's right. There are none more committed, but away from the Britannia bearpit, it's soporific. Just for the hell of it, but knowing the real answer as well as the one he'll give, I ask him if he came for one point or three. "I set out to win all matches," he says. And, yes, he was smiling.