Man the World Cup is getting so little attention over here. The only people who seem aware are a couple of guys from work and TSN, with its desultory hype for it all summer long. After every World Cup, with the Canadian team obtaining results and chock-full of youngsters who seem ready to take the team to ever improved results, I think the game is on more solid footing here, and that we're bound to improve.
Canada plays Ireland on Saturday to start their tournament. It's gonna be a tough one, we usually go in as the scrappy underdog who can cause an upset, who’ll surprise teams with their toughness and tenacity, but man we’ve been losing a lot of matches lately, the Pacific Nations Cup was an ordeal. Even the States are giving us a run for our money now.
I keep hoping for a white knight to come in and be the patron of Canadian rugby, our version of a Paul Allen or corporate entity who'll invest/sink a lot of money in grassroots programs, with coaching as a priority. I'd like to see a Canadian Super League, with a couple team in Vancouver, one in Victoria, four or five in Toronto and a couple in Montréal. Have kids shoot for that as an intermediate goal, to play minor pro in Canada, before they're recruited to play in Europe in 2nd or 1st Division.
So anyway I’ll watch the tournament, but I won’t even have my fingers crossed. We're beyond a longshot now, we're more of a team on the downswing of what is hopefully just a fallow period.
But I do hereby resolve to be as insufferable about it as a lot of members were about the Soccer Pratfall and Histrionics World Cup last year. I'll talk it up and blog and try to get viewing parties going, especially for the final game. And hope that the next World Cup, that's the one where we make some noise.
Or the one after that, same diff.
No comments:
Post a Comment