Judgement day

After 10 months and 45 Championship matches all that separates Wigan and Ipswich is goal difference. But, by 3pm tomorrow, one will be in the Premiership, the other consigned to the lottery of the play-offs

On the wall in a spartan corridor beneath the JJB Stadium hangs a faded shot of a Brylcreemed band of footballers celebrating the Lancashire Combination title. Another group, all windswept hair and sideburns, show off the Cheshire League trophy. Opposite the pictures is a sign that points, intriguingly, to "Rigoletto's". A scribe searching for the press room pushes the door and finds himself in a restaurant straight out of Siena or Sorrento. "Blimey," he says, "it's like entering a parallel universe."

Wigan Athletic's current crop of players will experience a similar sensation tomorrow provided Paul Jewell's team beat Reading at home to complete a 27-year rise from the Northern Premier League to the Premier League. For the club whose fiercest rivals were once Altrincham and Stafford Rangers, this is a £40m match. Their owner, Dave Whelan, has pledged to match the £20m they could expect from sponsorship and television-appearance money if promoted.

Anything less than victory, however, could let in Ipswich Town, managed by Jewell's fellow Merseysider Joe Royle, whose last Championship fixture is at Brighton & Hove Albion. After 45 games and 10 months, the hopes and fears of two clubs are compressed into one afternoon when hearts will flutter like a supporter's scarf from a car window.

While the victors spray the bubbly, the team missing out on automatic promotion will undertake a trudge of honour. They must compete for a place in the Premiership with three comparative also-rans. The history of the play-offs - and the record of frayed nerves of both Wigan (four failures out of four) and Ipswich (five attempts, one success) - suggest that finishing third could be the prelude to bitter anticlimax.

The contrasts between Wigan and Ipswich are stark. The Lancashire club have been transformed by Whelan, the sportswear tycoon and former Blackburn Rovers defender, but although the home tickets for tomorrow are sold out, his investment in his home-town team has often received an underwhelming public response. Despite having a swish new home for six seasons, complete with Italian eaterie, Wigan play to the division's fourth smallest average crowd, less than 11,200.

The East Anglian outfit average 25,700, but they were in administration two years ago and still owe £25m for ground improvements plus £20m to creditors. The latter repayments will rise from 5p in the pound to 20p should they be promoted in the strange surroundings of a municipal park at relegation-threatened Brighton.

For all Wigan's wealth, Ipswich possess the richer pedigree. The Freight Rover Trophy and Auto Windscreens Shield are no match for the Uefa Cup, a League championship and an FA Cup, which Bobby Robson's team won shortly before Wigan were voted into the League in Southport's place in 1978.

Jewell, who first came to Wigan on loan from Liverpool in 1984 and returned as manager four years ago, dwells on the past only to place into context a potentially glittering future. First, there's the recent history: a year ago, Wigan were denied a play-off place when a late goal by West Ham's Brian Deane let Crystal Palace sneak past them. An "unbelievable" moment, recalled Jewell, wincing at the memory.

Now, though, they are within touching distance of what Jewell calls "a fairytale". A surprising term, perhaps, for a scouse socialist, but he remembers swapping the "cocoon" of an understudy's life at Anfield for the old Springfield Park ground. There was "hardly a blade of grass"; the players trained on wasteland "with bricks for goals"; and he had to wash his own strip.

"It's almost like two separate clubs," said the 40-year-old Jewell. "We've come a long, long way. The facilities are so much better at the JJB, which means you can attract better players. We were second bottom of League One not long after I took over. People are waiting for the Wigan bubble to burst and it hasn't. The players deserve credit for that. If we get to the promised land it would surpass anything I've done in football.

"To do that we must approach the Reading game with vigour, not trepidation, and the training this week has been the best all season. I sensed edginess at Preston last Saturday. People were saying 'if we beat them and Crewe draw at Ipswich and so on'. But now it's down to us. If we win, nothing Ipswich do will be good enough.

"I always thought it would go to the final game, but I'm so glad it's clear-cut for us. When I was at Bradford City, we went to Wolves on the last day needing a win to go up. A draw would have been no good. Sometimes it's better that way; it doesn't allow for any negative thoughts. The next year we beat Liverpool on the final afternoon, but it would have counted for nothing if Wimbledon had won at Southampton."

To add a further twist to a plot thicker than a motorway fog - Ipswich were the club Jewell's Bradford thwarted in 1999 - Royle is a close friend of Reading's manager, Steve Coppell. They even attended the same Liverpool school. The Ipswich manager said he would be phoning him before the game, though the Berkshire club's position means they need no extra motivation to win. Unfortunately for Royle, Brighton require at least a point to stay in the second tier.

"So many people are asking me how I feel Wigan will get on," said the 56-year-old Royle, a veteran of many a nerve-shredding last-day game and play-off nail-biter with Oldham Athletic, Everton and Manchester City. "They are missing the point, because if we don't win at Brighton, that won't matter. We're playing a desperate team who need the points, so I don't expect the walkover people have been talking about. This is going to be a hard match."

For three months, Ipswich were in pole position in the Championship. Royle, while philosophical over the way Sunderland surged through to take the title and Wigan have established an insurmountable goal difference, added: "It was in our own hands for a while, but it slipped through, so it is what it is now. I'm looking forward to this game just as I do every game. The day I stop doing that is the day I disappear.

"I'll be no more or less stressed or concerned about it than any other match. Some managers are overtly excited, but I'll try to stay calm. Dramas are always in hindsight and I've been in this kind of position many times. It would be nice for it to be plain sailing - we do what we have to do and the other fixture goes the way we want. Somehow I doubt whether it will be that simple."

In the general election, Jewell's wish for red to be the predominant hue was granted. "Now I'm hoping it's a blue day on Sunday," he said impishly. The recent swing to Wigan makes them favourites, but as Royle would doubtless point out, blue is the colour for Ipswich, too.

Touchline trauma One more afternoon of agony for Paul Jewell and Joe Royle

Play-offs: 3rd v 6th, 4th v 5th (two-legged semi-finals).

Final: 30 May (Cardiff, 3pm)

Tomorrow's games

Brighton v IPSWICH................(1pm)

WIGAN v Reading...................(1pm)

Don't finish third...

* History suggests that whichever of Wigan or Ipswich miss out on automatic promotion tomorrow, that team will suffer in the play-offs. Only three sides who finished third in the regular season have gone on to reach the Premiership. But, Ipswich were one of them...

Season Play-off winner (position)

1989-90 Sunderland (6th)

1990-91 Notts County (4th)

1991-92 Blackburn Rovers (6th)

1992-93 Swindon Town (5th)

1993-94 Leicester (4th)

1994-95 Bolton (3rd)

1995-96 Leicester (6th)

1996-97 Crystal Palace (6th)

1997-98 Charlton (4th)

1998-99 Watford (5th)

1999-00 Ipswich (3rd)

2000-01 Bolton (3rd)

2001-02 Birmingham (5th)

2002-03 Wolves (5th)

2003-04 Crystal Palace (6th)