TYLDESLEY rugby union club have thrown open the doors of their new £1.1m St George's Park clubhouse and ground.

The move to the 14 acre St George's Park site on Astley Street, was funded by the sale of their Well Street ground for housing.

The new clubhouse is the centrepiece of the development, housing the Ramsden Lounge, named after William Ramsden, who gave the Well Street ground in trust to the club, a club room sponsored by Warburton's bread, six dressing rooms, medical room and a gym area.

Outside there are three full size pitches and training area plus parking for up to 80 cars.

The first team changing room is the same area in size to that of the England dressing room at Twickenham while over 3,500 metres of draining pipe and 6,000 tons of sand were used in the construction of the new pitches.

It is an impressive development and although the clubhouse was designed and completed within eight months, the heavy rain through the winter held up the completion of work on the pitches.

"Because of that we are still using our Well Street ground at the moment but our first match for the new ground is planned for October," said secretary Howard Hughes.

"We can't quite believe that all this has happened in such a short space of time. It was 1998 when we looked at the possibility of moving to a new ground. By 2000 all the legal work had been completed and work started on clearing the site and laying the pitches while earlier this year the clubhouse was started.

"Over the last four years a lot of people have helped the club and what we have now is a credit to them."