A marriage made in Headingley

It's a marriage, not a merger. And if anyone at Headingley was worried that the bride was leading a Trojan horse into their midst, they were reining in those feelings yesterday.

Leeds rugby union club, currently struggling in the Third Division of the Courage League, will play their home matches for the next five seasons at Leeds rugby league's Headingley ground. The two clubs are also to co-operate in setting up a centre of excellence to tutor young players in both codes.

Other clubs, Wigan and Orrell amongst them, are edging towards similar arrangements. "But I'm glad that this is the first," said Brian Walker, the deputy leader of Leeds City Council, which is solidly behind the link. "It is another example of good old Yorkshire common sense."

So far, so sensible. But some faces, notable that of the rugby league club's manager, Hugh McGahan, fell visibly when his chairman, Denis Greenwood, cheerfully declared that "We would be delighted if some of our players were asked to play rugby union. With Super League and summer rugby, some of them could be interested in playing in the winter months as well."

McGahan looked anything but delighted and Leeds' chief executive, Alf Davies, was also much more cautious than his chairman on the subject of the cross-over potential.

"I know that our coach, Dean Bell, has plans for pre-season training and will have something to say about it," he said. "It would only be possible for the rugby union club to have them for a short time. But, having said that, we ourselves have used short-term imports from abroad to whet people's appetites and maybe they could do something similar."

Nor has Davies any qualms about allowing Headingley to be used to help what for 100 years has been the rival code show itself off to its best advantage.

"The situation is that the barriers are down," he said. "They never were all that obvious in the north of England in any case. We want them on board because it helps us finance ourselves in Super League. We have to work like mad over the next three years, because we are all financially embarrassed.

"I don't see them ever taking over. It is a good commercial decision. We can't afford to turn away anyone who wants to come to Headingley and use our facilities."

The Leeds RU chairman, Mike Palmer-Jones, was at pains to point out that his club - the product of a merger between Headingley and Roundhay in 1991 - would not be merging with Leeds RL. "It would be a marriage," he said. "And it should be a union blessed with success, sooner rather than later."

The possibility of failure and an allowance for what happens if the union club is relegated in April, or the attendances prove disappointing or uneconomic were discounted by officials from both clubs.

The union club are to press on with their application to develop a 24-acre site two miles from Headingley that, if granted (which is by no means certain), will be used by both clubs for training and junior team rugby.