Great stories but little hope for dedicated Canadians

Ahead of their World Cup opener with Ireland, Canadian journalist Patrick Johnston talks modest expectations.

Canada is nearly 10 million square kilometres.

There are 36.5 million Canadians.

Something like 100,000 of those play rugby at some level or another. For comparison: ice hockey, the national obsession, counts more than 540,000 players. Soccer is north of 850,000.

On a recent holiday Monday, a Canada vs. USA rugby match pulled in 146,000 TV viewers. Canada’s sole Major League Baseball team, the Blue Jays, are on a major hot streak and are pulling in more than a million viewers at a time. Last June’s final match of the Stanley Cup, ice hockey’s holy grail, had 2.6 million sets of eyeballs watching - and neither team was from Canada.

Canadians do like a winner, especially one on the global stage: the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup final, with Canada taking on England, drew nearly a million viewers.

But, despite the success of the women, rugby, it’s fair to say, remains far from big time in the Great White North.

Had Brian O’Driscoll been born in Canada, he would not have ended up a rugby player, he’d have played something else. And he might have been named Sidney or Wayne – after hockey’s current best, or its all-time best.

Canada’s top rugby players, the ones who will run out on Sept. 19 at Millennium Stadium, are nonetheless a committed and dedicated bunch.

Some were Canadian football players. Many were ice hockey players. A good number have been rugby players from a young age. Three of them speak with a not-exactly Canadian twang. One is French: born in Montreal, but raised in France.

The one thing that unites them: passion for the Maple Leaf. Just as Canadian backpackers are known for their pride in showing a flag on their bag, Canadian rugby players say they play for the pride of wearing the red.

For Canadian flanker Jebb Sinclair, the ethos is “hard working and physical. Just a bunch of guys who love playing rugby together.”

Sinclair’s one of a contingent who ply their trade in the professional ranks of Europe - London Irish in his case. Many know of Jamie Cudmore’s campaigns in France. There’s Jeff Hassler and Tyler Ardron, stars of the Ospreys. DTH van der Merwe, until he moved to the Scarlets, was a hero in Glasgow. A number of others have landed in England and France’s lower divisions. There’s a handful of domestic professionals, like fly-half Nathan Hirayama, scrum-half Phil Mack and flankers John Moonlight and Nanyak Dala, who are in the national sevens program and draw a salary from government grants. They’ve also got Olympic dreams.

And then there are the throwbacks, who really do it for the love of the game.

There’s hooker Ray Barkwill, who’s trained as a teacher. Centre Nick Blevins has ambitions of becoming a chef. Scrum-half Gord McRorie - originally from Scotland - is a bartender. Reserve prop Doug Wooldridge is in sales for an elevator service company.

Ask these fellows, who train mostly at their own expense, what it is they’re doing in life: their job won’t spring to their lips. “Rugby” is the answer.

The Canadians know that while the bold amateur may make for a great story, against Ireland’s full-time pros, the odds against them are stacked as high as can be. The Canadians know Pool D is as tough as it will ever be for the Maple Leaf at a World Cup. The high moment of the 1991 quarter-final showdown with the All Blacks is far, far in the distant past.

Since his appointment in 2008, the coach, ex-All Black Kieran Crowley, has spoken of a firm belief in this team’s abilities to play an ambitious game. He’s also expressed frustration at the little errors littering their game. What should have been wins this summer over Samoa and the USA were lost on bad bounces and one or two unfortunate errors.

One day, perhaps, Canada will find a couple professional teams of its own on its shores – “it would fix a lot of things,” former superstar, now national manager, Gareth Rees has said – but for now, the Canadians, whoever they are, will simply give fans their best. If they win some new hearts and minds along the way, all the better.