Toronto Wolfpack host Oxford in historic rugby league match in Canada

Five years of planning will come to fruition on Saturday night when Toronto Wolfpack host the first professional rugby league match to be played in Canada.

The Wolfpack, proudly proclaiming themselves to be the first professional trans-Atlantic sport team, have played eight competitive fixtures so far, all away from home, in the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup and Kingstone Press League 1.

They experienced defeat for the first time when they were knocked out of the Cup in their last match by Super League club Salford but are looking to make it six successive league wins when part-timers Oxford play their part in history by providing the first opposition for Toronto at their Lamport Stadium.

There are few foregone conclusions in sport but this is one.

Established by Toronto-born businessman Eric Perez and bankrolled by Australian mining magnate David Argyle, director of rugby Brian Noble and head coach Paul Rowley have assembled a team that, even by a conservative estimate, would comfortably hold their own in the top half of the Championship.

But the Wolfpack agreed to start at the bottom of the three-tier pyramid and, after opening their league programme with a 76-0 rout of London Skolars, they topped that with an 82-6 hammering of Doncaster and then beat North Wales Crusaders 80-0.

Whitehaven and Keighley provided more stern opposition before bowing to the inevitable.

It seems inconceivable that Rowley's star-studded, full-time team would fail to top the previous highest League 1 score - set by Toulouse with their 84-6 win over Keighley last June - against Oxford, with even chief executive and founder Adrian Smith fearing the worst.

Not all the Oxford players have been able to take time off work and some sustained injuries in Sunday's 64-14 League 1 Cup semi-final defeat at Barrow, with the result that coach Tim Rumford, whose full-time job is with Castleford's foundation team, was forced to scrape around to get enough players for the flight to Toronto on Thursday.

"It's been frantic, far more so than we expected, to get them up, off and away," said Smith.

"It has been quite stressful, going from Barrow, they'll be doing 4,000 miles in four days, so it's quite epic.

"Four or five of the lads couldn't take the time off and we lost three or four to injury so we've had to draft a few boys in to give them an opportunity.

"It will be men against boys. Our squad has a lot of 19 to 22-year-olds that we've taken out of academies, the amateur game and rugby union and given them a chance. We are a club of opportunity.

"But they are going to be playing against quite a large group of Super League players so I do fear for them, the young ones, going into the wolves' den as it were. But it's an experience and youth exuberance does carry you a long way."

Cost

Although Toronto are footing the bill for all their opponents' travel and accommodation this year, it will cost the Oxford players in lost wages while Smith's co-director and fellow founder Tony Colquit, a former chief executive of St Helens, is paying his own way to accompany the team.

It is an example of the contrasting way two rugby league clubs are seeking to establish themselves in virgin territory.

"We're five seasons old this year," said Smith, who has been unable to take time off from running his own live events communications agency in Leeds to make the trip.

"We've quite an eclectic bunch, people from around the Oxford and Didcot area, Bristol, London, Northampton all the way up to Cumbria, even lads from Holland, Germany and Belfast as well as Wakefield, Castleford and St Helens.

"We've got students, people in the forces, personal trainers, people who work in laboratories, a real cross-section of people who have had to take three days off.

"That's been a concern but from pre-season, once we saw the draw, we talked to the whole group - said we wanted to know who was up for it.

"It's a big commitment from these young lads but they've embraced it, as have we, as an exciting adventure.

"It's potentially once in a lifetime, something they'll talk about in 10 or 15 years' time, I would hope, as a good memory.

"There is no way it could happen weekly but as a one-off, we're making it work."