SIR JACK HAYWARD, THE multimillionaire owner of Wolverhampton Wanderers, may live in the Bahamas, but he complains that he has yet to have his day in the sun.

The self-made man, who flew RAF fighter jets during the Second World War, has poured nearly £50 million into the club he watched as a boy, in the quest for a place in the Premiership, but he has yet to turn the dream into reality.

One game of football, against Sheffield United in the Nationwide League first division play-off final today, stands in the way of him recouping some of his money and sharing the glory of promotion. Victory would be a perfect birthday present for the club’s chairman and president, who turns 80 next month.

“I’m looking forward to gaining promotion and getting cheques from Sky and Rupert Murdoch rather than me writing them all,” he said.

The financial prize for the winner of this afternoon’s match is among the biggest in world football. Moving up from the first division is worth about £15 million because of the size of the Premiership’s central media and sponsorship deals. The losing club will have to content itself with a central payment of just £586,000 from the Football League next season and about half that in television appearance fees.

Wolves, in their first play-off final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, know how much is at stake. Jez Moxey, the chief executive, described it as “the biggest game in our contemporary history”.

Failure will be devastating if it marks the end of Hayward’s patronage. He has said that he will consider his position if Dave Jones, the manager, does not win promotion, despite the chairman bankrolling signings such as Paul Ince, Denis Irwin, Ivar Ingimarsson and Marc Edworthy.

After 13 fruitless seasons, Hayward could be tempted to withdraw his backing. The club has long-term debt of about £35 million and made a pre-tax loss of £4.5 million last season, despite turning over nearly £17 million. It is spending nearly 70 per cent of its income on wages and its credit rating is deemed to be high risk by its auditors. The accounts show a football club bleeding cash. For every £2 earned each season, nearly £7 goes straight out again.

Yet Wolves could turn it round with promotion. The club is backed by an impressive board, including Paul Manduca, the chief executive of Rothschild Asset Management, Derek Harrington, the former chief executive of the Port of Felixstowe, and Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, the former England women’s cricket captain. Wolves also have a loyal fan base, with average attendances of 25,745 this season at the 28,500-seat Molineux stadium.

On the other hand, fan loyalty has been something of a problem for Sheffield United. Bramall Lane, which seats 30,413, has been attracting an average of 18,069 a game. Attendances could fall next season if they not win promotion.

But they are in better financial shape than Wolves. The public company that owns United is in the process of raising between £4 million and £5 million through a share issue. After the restructuring, debt is expected to fall from £13.2 million to £10 million. That should be manageable even in the first division.

What would not be acceptable is the £4.5 million wage bill, at roughly 70 per cent of annual turnover. That would need to be trimmed. Promotion, of course, would render that cost negligible.

Whoever wins promotion does not want to fall into the trap of blowing the windfall on a crop of new players who are not a guarantee to success in the upper echelon of English football. The experience of Leicester City — relegated with debts of £50 million and put into administration — was a lesson to all aspiring clubs.

Kevin McCabe, Sheffield United plc’s acting chairman, said that the club would be banking on homegrown talent to keep the team in contention without the club going bust, while new signings would come at a much lower price than last season because of the collapse of the transfer market. “Most clubs promoted to the Premiership now do not just go for broke,” he said. “Look at Leicester, even Ipswich. It nearly killed them and it’s not worth it.”

The reward of reaching the Premiership is worth shooting for, but what a club does then is now the difference between survival and insolvency. For Wolves, to ensure the former may depend entirely on what happens today. Their fans had better hope that the sun shines for Hayward.