Whelan's £10m plan for Wigan

Dave Whelan has revealed a £10million masterplan to revolutionise Wigan and catapult the most famous name in rugby league to the top of the union Premiership.

The newest, and richest, club owner is prepared to pump millions into rescuing Wigan's neighbours Orrell from their post-professionalism slump and convert the impoverished old amateur club into a major force under a brand new banner uniting the codes: Wigan Orrell RFC.

Whelan, the creator of the JJB Sports retail empire whose personal fortune is estimated at more than £300m, already owns the Wigan Warriors league club and Wigan Athletic soccer club.

He is the first tycoon to acquire three clubs playing different codes of football, and has put Warriors chairman Maurice Lindsay in charge of resurrecting Orrell, the Lancashire town's suburban 15-a-side club currently bidding for promotion from the Second Division.

Whelan said: 'Maurice and I have one ambition, and that's to win the Zurich Premiership. I'm not saying we'll do it in the fastest time possible, but we are going to try.

'Wigan is famous for winning, quality rugby. It's no use Wigan Orrell finishing in the bottom half. We want the likes of Leicester to be looking up and saying to themselves: "Hello, here come Wigan".

'How long will it take? We'd like to get there in three years. It might take

10. You never know in sport, but we know what we want. We want to be the top club in rugby league and we also want to be the top club in rugby union.

'Wigan is the most famous rugby town in the world and, with that in mind, we will be asking the RFU permission to change the name from Orrell to Wigan Orrell. This is what we are proposing and I can't see any objections. I have spoken to the members at Orrell and they support the idea.

'It's going to cost around £10m to make Wigan Orrell one of the top three union clubs in the land. We have put a figure of £1m on getting the club up into National League One. If we are lucky enough to go up, we will then look to sign three international players from overseas.

'When it comes to getting into the Premiership, we will commit whatever funds are necessary. Maurice is a big, big part of this. Once he puts his mind to something, he is a determined winner.'

When it comes to determined winners, they don't come any bigger than Whelan himself, Wigan born and bred, and a far bigger player now than as a First Division footballer with Blackburn Rovers, best remembered for breaking a leg at Wembley during the 1960 FA Cup final against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Now he promises to become the biggest of the big hitters drawn to union since professionalism - bigger even than Sir John Hall, Nigel Wray and the rest.

Whelan's move into union is seen by some as a classic case of a major investor hedging his bets at a time when the two codes are closer than at any stage since The Great Schism of 1895. While disagreeing with the merger theory, Whelan acknowledges that union has an international dimension which league can only dream about.

'I see league and union getting closer together,' he said. 'Union is a world game. League, in the UK, is a northern game. We at Wigan feel we have to keep our options open and look at it on a wider scale. We think we can play both codes.'

He sees Orrell playing Premier-ship matches before crowds of up to 10,000 in the JJB Stadium. His move comes at a time when the elite professional game in England has never been more popular, when England can boast a gate of 60,000 for a meaningless mismatch against Romania on the very day Great Britain's rugby league team managed barely one-third of the Twickenham crowd for the second of their Ashes series against Australia.

In two years' time the Premiership clubs will be guaranteed £2.4m per club per season from the RFU as their share of television and commercial deals. The top Super League clubs like Wigan receive less than a third of that from central funds.

'Never go into sport thinking you are going to make money from it,' said Whelan. 'It's going to cost me money but I go into it with my eyes open. It's given me everything in life so I have to put something back.

'At Wigan we have in the order of 40 players on the books. I have no doubts some of those lads will want to play cross-code rugby and we'll encourage them at certain times.'

Whelan's cross-code move raises the intriguing prospect of Wigan's Great Britain full back Kris Radlinski playing union - the same Radlinski whom Lindsay succeeded in keeping in league despite a £1m- plus bid by the RFU to relocate him at Leicester.

Gary Connolly, underplayed after a Super League season racked by injury, will be the first big name to make the switch, a temporary transfer which takes effect from next week's English Cup tie against Leeds at Edge Hall Road.

Ten seasons ago Orrell went within an inch of breaking Bath's monopoly of the old Courage First Division title. Since then they have fallen on hard times and into administration, a double relegation leaving them in danger of joining Moseley, Aberavon and Richmond as a busted flush from the days when the only money players saw was stuffed into a boot.

Orrell have retained links with the good old days. Chas Cusani is still locking the scrum at 36 and, more importantly, Sammy Southern, the club's indomitable tight-head prop in the glory years under Des Seabrook's coaching, is now running the team and making a pretty good fist of it.

In a perfect world, Sammy will take his beloved Orrell all the way back to the promised land.

Now that Whelan is backing the pride of a club built on the guts of yesterday's heroes like Southern, Bob Kimmins, Dave Cleary, Dewi Morris and Simon Langford - the best full back never to play for England - how can Orrell fail?

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