Walls come tumbling down at Central Park

A piece of rugby union history will be created on Saturday when Orrell and Leicester, the champions, step out at Central Park - home of Wigan, giants of rugby league - for their First Division fixture. A fairly ordinary match, sixth v second, but an extraordinarily symbolic occasion.

But for Orrell, who have had what seemed a perpetual existence in Wigan's shadow, the significance will lie less in Saturday's symbolism than in what it portends for their own future. The professionalisation of rugby union, that once appeared a threat, could after all turn out to be a salvation.

"I must admit I didn't quite expect things to happen this quickly but I couldn't see any reason why we wouldn't have this coming-together before long," Peter Williams, Orrell's director of rugby since January, said. This would undoubtedly be anathema to rugby union's die-hards as represented by the more voluble element among the attendance at last Sunday's Rugby Football Union special meeting in Birmingham, but so what? There is, too, a residual element at Edge Hall Road who would have nothing to do with their neighbours four miles away across the M6.

But in Orrell they are so used to the looming presence of rugby league, and to having their best players picked off not only by rugby league but by more southerly rugby union, that they fully deserve this chance to exploit a rugby-rich part of Lancashire. As Phil Moss, their coach, put it: "There are more talented rugby players within 10 square miles than possibly anywhere in the world."

By next season they could well be playing all their fixtures at Wigan (a move that cannot come soon enough for Moss), with the Orrell ground being used for training as well as Wigan A-team and Orrell second-team fixtures. Even the most ambitious expansion plan for Edge Hall Road would bring the capacity up to no more than 5,000, so what's the point? Wigan and Orrell have already trained there together. Talks are taking place for Orrell to have use of certain Wigan players during rugby league's off-season.

Indeed Wigan are so accommodating that, in order for Orrell to play at Central Park on Saturday, they have switched their inaugural Super League fixture against Oldham to the Watersheddings with a 6pm kick-off that would enable any Wiganers who fancied the idea to watch Orrell first. The rearranged Orrell v Bath fixture is also planned for Central Park on 20 April.

And the walls came tumbling down. No one personifies this better than Williams, 37, an England outside-half prematurely discarded after four caps in 1987 who had been with Orrell 11 years when he turned professional (an expression that has an archaic ring to it these days) with Salford in 1988. He played league for Great Britain and Wales, land of his father, a former Llanelli union player from Ammanford who had himself turned pro.

"I'm not here to make a lot of friends," Williams said. "I'm here to do a job and I'm sure I'm going to upset people but as long as I'm honest and learn by my mistakes that's as much as I can do. It's been frustrating in some respects, primarily because of what has happened with other clubs who have a lot of money and have been coming up here looking at my players.

"I'm fortunate with a young side and I can understand all this interest because there's a lot of potential here. But whether we keep them together will ultimately depend on finance." How piquant, then, that Leicester are Saturday's visitors, since they have as good as signed one of Orrell's most valuable assets, the sprightly England A scrum-half Austin Healey.