They'd brought the kick-off forward because Orrell were still without floodlights at Edge Hall Road, but this cup tie nevertheless lingered into the gloomy hours, stretched beyond its natural 80 minutes by a home team that gave Northampton a far sterner test than they would have liked. There's a lot of bad blood between the close-knit Premiership clubs and all those below, but Orrell did more than any of the other down-trodden ones in the first division to trouble their noble opponents in the Powergen Cup.

Only a last-minute try from Peter Jorgensen saved the Saints from being unceremoniously knocked out at the first hurdle. Paul Grayson was unable to convert from the touchline and the game went into extra time, with the scores locked at 34-34.

Still Orrell would not go quietly, and with only 10 minutes of extra time to play, they led 44-34. But Jorgensen struck again to claim a hat-trick and Ian Vass scored twice as Northampton scored 21 points in the last five minutes to save their - and the Premiership's - faces.

Hostilities didn't finish there, either, with Ross Reynolds, the Orrell coach, afterwards suggesting that the visitors had been arrogant to leave five interna tional players out of their starting line-up, albeit that one of them, Ben Cohen, had been injured during the warm-up.

'They normally play Heineken Cup and Premiership rugby,' Reynolds said, 'and they must have been hoping to rest guys, which was probably being a bit arrogant.'

Reynolds was also aggrieved about Jorgensen's match-levelling second try, claiming that the ball was short of the line. By that point, though, Wayne Smith, Northampton's coach had been forced to bleed his internationals back into his ailing team, with Steve Thompson, Tom Smith, Steve Williams and Grayson all brought off the bench to help steer Northampton out of trouble. 'Orrell were the moral winners today,' Smith fumed. 'Ross is a friend as well as an old adversary, and I feel for him. I thought we had lost it. There was only one team out there that had the hunger - and they were not in the green, gold and black of Northampton.'

But Orrell had put down their own marker, alongside those of the likes of Rotherham and Worcester, for a place at the top table. The game had yielded no fewer than 14 tries, including a hat-trick from Orrell's Nick Easter and an appearance from Gary Connolly, the former rugby-league star, now helping Orrell's cause.

It looked like Worcester might also show their worth against a famous Premiership side at less than full strength. And they don't get much more famous than Leicester at Welford Road. The Tigers were only 12-9 ahead at half-time with only 14 men after a yellow card for Will Johnson. But Worcester's subsidence kicked in rather earlier than Orrell's, and by the end the Tigers were 36-9 winners.

It hardly seems worth mentioning, in the light of all this Premiership/first-division aggro, the all-Premiership clash between Harlequins and Leeds. But Ben Gollings's last-minute try earned Quins a 17-13 win, after an hour of constant pressure following Dan Scarbrough's try for Leeds.

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