Early 20th Century
In 1904, 14 clubs resigned from the two county leagues to form a new Northern Rugby League for season 1901–02. Wigan however remained in the Lancashire Senior Competition.
Wigan became sub-tenants of Springfield Park, which the club shared with Wigan United AFC, playing its first game there on 14 September 1901. A crowd of 4,000 saw Wigan beat Morecambe 12–0. During this season Wigan won the Lancashire Senior Competition.
Wigan's record crowd at Springfield Park was 10,000 when the team beat Widnes on 19 March 1902. The last game there was on 28 April 1902 when Wigan beat the Rest of Lancashire Senior Competition. Two meetings were held by Wigan members during the season to discuss the possibility of turning the club into a Limited Company did not come to fruition.
On 6 September 1902, Wigan played at Central Park for the first time in the opening match of the newly formed First Division. An estimated crowd of 9,000 spectators saw Wigan beat Batley 14–8.
In the 1905–06 season theclub won its first cup in rugby league, the Lancashire Cup. Between 1906 and 1923 Wigan won the Lancashire League seven times and the Lancashire Cup four times. Wigan were the first winners of the Lancashire Cup.
Wigan played New Zealand on 9 November 1907 and won by 12 points to 8 in front of a crowd of around 30,000. Great Britain, then known as the Northern Union, played its first test match against New Zealand on 25 January 1908. Jim Leytham, Bert Jenkins, and Johnny Thomas of Wigan were in the home side and Jim Leytham scored a try. Bert Jenkins and Johnny Thomas had previously played in the first Welsh game against New Zealand on 1 January 1908.
On Saturday 28 October 1911, Wigan played a match against the Australasian team which visited England on the 1911–12 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain and won.
On 12 May 1921, Wigan became a limited company.
In June 1922 Jim Sullivan joined Wigan from Cardiff RFC when he was 17 years old. His value was put at £750, which was a staggering signing-on fee for an adolescent who had not played 13-a-side rugby. His first game was at home against Widnes on 27 August 1921, and he scored ten points in a 21–0 win. Sullivan scored the first points in the first Challenge Cup Final to be played at Wembley Stadium, kicking a penalty after three minutes of the inaugural Challenge Cup Final against Dewsbury in 1929 in which he led Wigan to a 13–2 victory. Sullivan became player-coach in 1932.
Wigan won its first Challenge Cup in the 1923–24 season when the team beat Oldham 21–4 in Rochdale. In 1933 the Prince of Wales attended Central Park, becoming the first royal to watch a rugby league match.
On 25 October 1938 Australian Harry Sunderland arrived in Wigan to take up the duties of Secretary-Manager at Central Park. On 28 September the following year, Sunderland's contract was terminated and he and the club parted company.
The outbreak of World War II disrupted the Rugby Football League Championship but Wigan continued to play in the Lancashire War League and the Emergency War League.
During the war years the club went through the 1940–41 season unbeaten although it lost the Championship final. It lost the 1944 Challenge Cup Final over two games to Bradford Northern 8–3 but made up for it beating Dewsbury in the Championship Final.
Read more about this topic: History Of Wigan Warriors
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