STOCKPORT a rugby town? Don't even dare to suggest it in Edgeley or Offerton, and be prepared for some stonewalling if you put the proposition to anyone at Sale Sharks.

And yet the Sharks, newcomers to the town's sporting scene, have booked a date at Twickenham for the Guinness Premiership final just a fortnight after County missed relegation from the Football League by a whisker on a tense final day of the season.

Sharks filled the ground for the semi-final against Wasps on Sunday and have averaged almost 9,000 this season, almost twice as many as County get in the bottom division of the League.

But any suggestion that Stockport has made a transformation after 123 years of proud football history is likely to get you either laughed out of town, or possibly booted out of it.

One Sale official baulked at the question posed in the introduction to this article, suggesting that the glaziers' bill might be a high one if he took such poisonous bait.

And a spokesman for the County supporters' trust, which now owns the club, bristled with indignation when asked the same.

Vast

"Sale Sharks are a north-west professional rugby union team.They get gates of around 8-9,000 on average and those people come from all over the region.

"County got 10,000 on the last day of the season and, while a lot of them were here to support our visitors Carlisle, you will find that the vast majority of the County fans there were from the town itself.

"Any concept that Stockport is now a rugby town simply is not right. There was no rugby in the town until Brendan Elwood sold us to Brian Kennedy so that Sale could have a ground."

When County and the Sharks were first uneasily wedded in 2003, with Sale owner Kennedy buying the football club, there was some mutual goodwill.

Fans were prepared to believe Kennedy's assertion that both clubs would be equal partners under the banner of Cheshire Sports, the company he set up to run the two.

That goodwill did not last long, and now Sale are seen as unwanted squatters who have taken over a stadium which County fans have called home since 1902. Sharks defeats are greeted in County pubs with the same kind of glee normally reserved for the misfortunes of United or City.

Sale's view is a little more distant. To them, Edgeley Park is simply the stadium where their team play. There is no emotional attachment.

"I think it is fair to say that County fans hate Sale Sharks with a passion," said the County trust spokesman. "I am not talking about the Sale fans, because there is no problem with them, and they are very nice people, but our supporters feel we have been sold down the river.

"Our own stadium has been sold from under our feet, although we are in the process of trying to buy the ground back."

The trust believes that County have weathered the storm, on the field and off it, and next season will see them start to make strides back up the League.

"We are the town's team, owned by the supporters, and our gates are growing. We still get more bodies through the turnstiles in a season than Sale do and, under Jim Gannon, having avoided relegation, we feel we are on our way back to the glory days," said their spokesman.

""But now at County we are talking to various businesses about investment, and will have one of the top five budgets in the division next season."

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