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Wigan’s cartoon mural - when is it too far?

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Old Frightful

Old Frightful

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Posted

The rather unsavoury bit aside, I have a feeling we'll be seeing plenty of this sort of stuff from other clubs shortly. I've been working at a house in East Hull and they have a jigsaw of the history of Hull KR and it was exactly this type of thing.

I was even discussing it at Wire last night as one of the banners held up in the crowd on the Hull KR version read "Phil Lowe crushes Stone with his hands", a reference to Hull FC's Charlie Stone, and I remember that particular banner from one of the Hull Derby finals of the 80's.

They seem to be very good and factual pieces of artwork with plenty of research gone into them and I think fans will clamour for them.

As for whether the Flower incident should have been included, well I guess that the Wigan club would surely have had their say and as they appear to have consented then I think they've made a rather large error of judgement.

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Dave T
Dave T

It still surprises me after all these years that some people here are trying to justify this attack because he plays for their team.  I've no doubts they will claim that's not what they are doing

Dunbar
Dunbar

I will say two things as a Wigan fan. Firstly, Flower was the aggressor in the incident.  It played out like this.  On the Wigan kick through, Flower had a high dig at Lance Hohaia, who was in th

dkw
dkw

I don't think having it on the mural is a problem, showing it in such a comedic way is, considering it actually ended a blokes career.

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gingerjon

gingerjon

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11 minutes ago, Old Frightful said:

The rather unsavoury bit aside, I have a feeling we'll be seeing plenty of this sort of stuff from other clubs shortly. I've been working at a house in East Hull and they have a jigsaw of the history of Hull KR and it was exactly this type of thing.

I was even discussing it at Wire last night as one of the banners held up in the crowd on the Hull KR version read "Phil Lowe crushes Stone with his hands", a reference to Hull FC's Charlie Stone, and I remember that particular banner from one of the Hull Derby finals of the 80's.

They seem to be very good and factual pieces of artwork with plenty of research gone into them and I think fans will clamour for them.

As for whether the Flower incident should have been included, well I guess that the Wigan club would surely have had their say and as they appear to have consented then I think they've made a rather large error of judgement.

The guy seems to make his living doing different versions for football clubs so they are undoubtedly very popular.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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Damien

Damien

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2 hours ago, Dave T said:

It's just the way isn't it. If you have any kind of discussion like this they will try and undermine your argument with claims of being offended, then we move onto virtue signalling, and inevitably cancelling. 

These terms are thrown around like confetti and I'm sure plenty don't actually know what they mean. The most offended are usually those who are all too quick to offend when it comes to topics they don't like.

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gingerjon

gingerjon

Posted
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3 minutes ago, Damien said:

These terms are thrown around like confetti and I'm sure plenty don't actually know what they mean. The most offended are usually those who are all too quick to offend when it comes to topics they don't like.

You can keep it as basic as: Is a cartoon representation, presented for fun, of a career-ending deliberately-caused injury the kind of thing that should be included in a lightweight, mostly-humorous creation about a club's history?

Says a lot about the people involved with it that they think it absolutely should be.

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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EagleEyePie

EagleEyePie

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55 minutes ago, dkw said:

I don't think having it on the mural is a problem, showing it in such a comedic way is, considering it actually ended a blokes career.

I agree. There's nothing necessarily wrong with having it on the mural. The mural itself doesn't say anything about it showing the greatest moments or that every moment is being celebrated. Every image on it is referenced around the edges and the Flower incident is in the section of 'Injuries, Tackles, Foul Play & Confrontation'. It's not 'celebrating' it just like it's not celebrating the fact Sam Tomkins got injured by depicting him on crutches. There are other depictions of players with serious injuries presented in a comedic way on there and some scraps too. I mean it also shows Phil Bentham lying on the floor with a broken leg.

Whether presenting those incidents in such is a comical and flippant way is appropriate I'm not so sure. They couldn't really change the style just for certain images but they could have just gone for a slightly different depiction. Maybe the argument will be that they are going for the iconic images and the moment of Flower's punch is unfortunately the iconic image.

Everyone will have their opinions. I'm not sure it's worth getting particularly upset over that depiction, I'm more disappointed that it includes Anthony Gelling.

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EastLondonMike

EastLondonMike

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Posted

I think it’s a pretty shabby thing to feature, along with the McDermott/Sironen incident (if that does feature, as someone previously mentioned). 
or indeed anything of a similar nature. Beggars belief that someone would actually think it’s a good idea.

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daz39

daz39

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6 hours ago, Desert Skipper said:

But it’s not for you, and it hardly inspires anything untoward such as racial hatred etc. Why be offended if you won’t see it? 

I've already said i'm not offended, i just think it's a bit distasteful after what happened to the victim after the incident.

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Dunbar

Dunbar

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54 minutes ago, StandOffHalf said:

It would have been better to illustrate this ignominious chapter through a picture of him trudging towards the Old Trafford side-line.

It does kind of come off as celebrating thuggishness.

There are at least 3 images of Wigan players committing acts of foul play / violence on their opponents so it is one of the themes in the mural.

"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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StandOffHalf

StandOffHalf

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9 minutes ago, Dunbar said:

There are at least 3 images of Wigan players committing acts of foul play / violence on their opponents so it is one of the themes in the mural.

An unsavoury theme and - more importantly - an unsavoury tone of presentation, in my opinion.

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The Lad

The Lad

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It's wrong that they have made this a part of their history mismatch, it's not something that should be  glorified or put on display. I think what makes it worse is the fact that it's cartoon as cartoon makes things lighthearted and sends a message that it's not to be taken seriously. 

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Dunbar

Dunbar

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37 minutes ago, StandOffHalf said:

An unsavoury theme and - more importantly - an unsavoury tone of presentation, in my opinion.

What I find interesting is the type of incidents they have chosen.  The punch on an already unconscious player, the elbow from McDermott on Sironen which was cowardly and dangerous. 

There is plenty of biff in Wigan's history where, as a fan, I have been rooting for them, O'connor against Tallis or the Manly game for example, but they have chosen incidents that I believe brought shame on the club.

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"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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StandOffHalf

StandOffHalf

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10 hours ago, Dunbar said:

What I find interesting is the type of incidents they have chosen.  The punch on an already unconscious player, the elbow from McDermott on Sironen which was cowardly and dangerous. 

There is plenty of biff in Wigan's history where, as a fan, I have been rooting for them, O'connor against Tallis or the Manly game for example, but they have chosen incidents that I believe brought shame on the club.

Yeah, the Tallis one was ugly but at least it was two guys unloading on each other. I would have thought something like that would make a mural of this sort.

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Padge

Padge

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Maybe the should have memorialized the incident that provoked that attack.

The only thing I am disturbed about is adding the Batman effect, that part trivialises the incident.  

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redjonn

redjonn

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Too be honest... it just reminds me of the Beano, the artwork is hardly highly creative just copying Beano type images...

Maybe other clubs will do a mural, but would hope for more creativity. 

Not sure it captures the essence of Wigan RLFC...

No problems with the guy doing it as I assume he is bringing himself in income - good luck to him.  

I'm assuming he as in the artist ask fans to give him "iconic or ironic moments" idea's which he capture's, hence I assume the Flower one must have been put forward by a reasonable number.

So on that point how did the artist come up with the iconic/ironic moments

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Wigan Riversider

Wigan Riversider

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17 hours ago, Cw25 said:

Thuggery. And they make a joke of it.

Watch the build up to the incident.

Something was bound to happen.

Watch 'Up n Under' 1992 or YouTube of Wembley 1990... Jackson and Mercer literally smashed Shaun Edwards' face in.

Warrington cited Joe Lydon for his tackle on Paul Bishop. Wigan took no action against Jackson nor Mercer.

I have posted similar before.

In conclusion, I defend noone in relation to thuggery but there are always at least two sides to every story.

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Wigan Riversider

Wigan Riversider

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21 hours ago, dkw said:

I don't think having it on the mural is a problem, showing it in such a comedic way is, considering it actually ended a blokes career.

I believe that the Saints didn't support the player as fully as they could?

As always, happy to be proven wrong as Saints is not my specialism in terms of SL.

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