Wigan primed to battle St George Illawarra in World Club Challenge

"They hated us, and we hated them." Thus did Shaun Wane, the Wigan assistant coach who was man of the match in the club's famous 8-2 victory over Manly in the first World Club Challenge in 1987, reflect on that brutal game on Thursday night at a dinner to celebrate Wigan's first appearance in the trans-hemisphere fixture for 17 years. Behind him on the top table Mark Gasnier, Nathan Fien and Ben Hornby – senior players of the St George Illawarra Dragons, the Australian champions who will be Wigan's opponents on – looked less than impressed. It was a convivial, enjoyable night, with Wigan's new Australian signing Brett Finch, who will miss the game with a neck injury, offering value to his new employers in less orthodox fashion by conducting interviews with Fien and Gasnier, the high-class centre who returned to the Dragons last year after two winters in rugby union with Stade Français. But all week since the Dragons arrived in London, a potentially explosive rivalry has simmered beneath the surface of the teams' mutual respect. They have similarly tough, attritional approaches to the game, and neither can avoid the weight of history. The Dragons are one of the most revered clubs in Australian sport, largely as a result of the 11 consecutive Premierships they won from 1956-66 as St George – well before their merger with the Illawarra Steelers – with such great names of the game as Johnny Raper, Gasnier's uncle Reg, and the former Warrington forward Harry Bath. But they have never played in England, the result of the long lean spell the club endured before Wayne Bennett's arrival from Brisbane in 2009 helped to make them champions for the first time in 31 years. For Wigan, the World Club Challenge is special. They won it three times between 1987-94, on the last occasion beating Brisbane Broncos in their own Queensland fortress. But it is the Manly game that provokes the most vivid memories, and has made the sight of Leeds, Bradford and St Helens representing the Super League in the fixture for the last 10 years especially hard to endure. "It's a remarkable story because it could so easily never have happened," says Maurice Lindsay, who, as Wigan's chairman, was the driving force behind that memorable night 24 years ago. "Wigan were on the way up at the time, and we wanted to find a way of grabbing some headlines and also for British rugby league to get some respect back from the Aussies. So we came up with the idea of getting one of their clubs over to play us. "But we didn't get any support from the Rugby Football League at all. In the end I decided to get out to Sydney and see if I could make it happen – although first I got myself some ammunition from a contact at Foster's, who agreed to put up A$100,000. I had a meeting with a few of the Australian officials during a game between Norths and Souths at the Sydney Cricket Ground, and put the idea to them, but it was only when I mentioned the money and said let's make it winner takes all that they got seriously interested. I think the Manly people, who were the top Aussie club at the time, thought they would be easy pickings. "We shook hands on it and I dashed down the stairs, went to a phone box and rang England straight away to get a press release issued. That was one of the best phone calls I've ever made, because that night against Manly was one of the absolute highlights of my career." Lindsay still encountered some stumbling blocks in his preparations for the fixture in that autumn of 1987. "I couldn't sell it to television – the bloody BBC refused to come in, sorry old boy, you know what they were like. In the end Channel 10 in Australia agreed to provide the pictures and we had half an hour of highlights on Granada – they were chuffed to bunkers, of course, and the BBC were furious that they missed the opportunity." Wane recalls Graham Lowe, the emotional New Zealander who was then coaching Wigan and would later join Manly, "spending seven weeks building up a real hatred of the Aussies in our dressing room. We just thought they were arrogant and we had to prove to them that we could play. "To be honest, in the buildup to the game most people in Wigan were just hoping that we could keep it competitive, I don't think anyone really thought we could win. But when I arrived at the ground [Central Park, Wigan's old home which has since made way for a Tesco superstore] about three hours before kick-off, there must already have been 10,000 in." The crowd eventually built to an official capacity of 36,895, although the regulars crammed on the terraces of the old Kop were convinced a few thousand more sneaked in. "We got fireworks ready for when the teams came out," Lindsay says. "That was something new at the time – Peter Deakin, who went on to work for Bradford and Warrington and also in rugby union with Saracens and Sale, actually lit the touchpaper up on the roof." The dismissal of "Rambo" Ronnie Gibbs, Manly's notorious second-row, for felling Joe Lydon after a first-half drop-goal attempt, did the same thing on the field. "I wish Gibbs had stayed on, because I'd rather have beaten Manly with a full 13," says Wane. "There was a lot else went on in that game which the cameras didn't pick up. I really enjoyed it." But he has not dwelled for long on anecdotes of brutality in his discussions with the Wigan players this week, rather on the place in the club's history that awaits them. "That Manly night was quarter of a century ago now, but people still ask me about it when I go out and even mention it to my wife at work. It just touched the lives of the people of Wigan. It changed my life and I want these Wigan players to have the same feelings I've had for 25 years. "Someone like Sean O'Loughlin, our captain and a Wigan lad who's gone through so much in a decade with the club – seeing him lift the Super League trophy after the Grand Final was the one thing that choked me last year and he knows how special it is for Wigan to be back in the World Club Challenge again." "Aye," said O'Loughlin, the tough and skilful loose forward who had not turned five in the autumn of 1987, but has been hearing tales of that Manly game for most of his life. "It's a huge game for all of us. We can't wait."