Door seal retaining ring refitting on AEG Lavamat W 1230

Hi, I’m trying to refit the plastic retaining ring on the outside of the door seal of my AEG Lavamat W 1230, and I can only get the first tooth of the alligator clamp (or whatever it’s called) together with each other. I know it was much further on than that when I removed it, has anybody got any advice for pulling the two sides together?

I watched this video:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-rep … -door-seal
but I noticed it just glossed over, or completely left out, the difficult bits… i.e. the very bits you would really want to see on video.

I then read this site:

http://scottbarnham.com/blog/2007/08/19 … g-machine/

and was interested in comments 11 and 12. I have some of these pliers, but I don’t think they are far enough apart to reach either side of the alligator teeth. Should I take the clip off and start again? I’ve already done that once. I’ve been pushing the clip in with a large flat head screwdriver, to try to encourage it to go in better, but all to no avail. It certainly didn’t go on anything like in that video, I had to push like hell all the way around, all of the time, just to get it in. (It’s definitely in the right way, I know the band is tapered to one side, pointing into the machine).