not many people on here can remember that at central park

It's where I first used to stand, leaning over the the tunnel when the players came out. Quality.

I think there are quite a few who can.

i know i can

I was about 9, and I remember getting shouted at by a bobby near the wall at the bottom for "swearing". All I said was "bloody rubbish".

What was actually classed as the 'hen pen'? I stood at the end hanging over the tunnel for years as a kid prior to the New Stand being built. Was that the same area?

My owd dad used to go on about it, made it sound like a cage for naughty kids. Thrown in prior to the game by his dad and collected after the game..!

Watch him miss it, watch him miss it.
The original cry from the hen pen.

And as the goalkicker ran up Booooooooooooooooooo.


Oh and the ice cream man. "Only one left"

3d for the bus to Wigan
3d for a programme
3d for admission to the hen pen
3d back home on the bus

Great value for a shilling in total, which is 5 pence for those who don't know. And you got to watch, Billy B, Eric Ashton, Brian McTigue, Frank Collier, Punchy Griffiths, DAvid Bolton et al. (Am I giving my age away?)

It is still great now at the JJB/DW but it don't half cost a lot more.

St Pats corner - just under the scoreboard.

Remember it well, but can't remember standing in there, my Nan used to take me to the kop end under the lights to stand, pop side, 1970 my first game I think.

I used to stand in the hen pen. I even watched* the Manly game from there


* watched as best I could aged 15 wedged in at the back just under the old clubhouse windows.

What was a shilling as a % of an average working mans pay back then?
Just to compare, like.

There was also the gate where when you'd paid your 3d to get in as a kid your dad could wait for you at the gate and take you through onto the terracing with the adults.
Half the kids used to watch for another young lad going through with his dad and say to the steward pointing to the lads dad "I'm with him" and you'd get through.

Watched Wigan from there during my first season in 80/81. I remember being stood next to a strange man at my very first Wigan game. That man, I later discovered was Gary Bennett.

I was just about to post the same. How many dads did them kids have?

Is he immortal like Captain Jack in Torchwood? Doesn't seem to age.
He used to ref me as a kid in the mid 80's..????

What was a fully grown man doing standing around kids?

Oh, wait a minute.....

Sometimes we got free tickets off Mr McDermott at St Pats. See there were even freebies in those days.

My first few games were spent in the Hen Pen aged 13 (I think) until I realised that the all the singing from Pop Stand didn't mean it was about to erupt into violence, so I spent almost all the rest of my Central Park "career" there instead.

Yeah, but were they paid for even though you were 'given' them?

Did Gary Bennett talk a lot ?

Never stops, will be there tomorrow night probably.

Talks a lot in Perpignan on a Saturday afternoon by the river but goes quieter after the game on Saturday night.

Me too