Saturday, 1 September 2018

Toronto Wolfpack 34, London Broncos 22, Lamport Stadium, Toronto, ON

The Toronto Wolfpack RLFC is a Canadian professional rugby league club, based in here Toronto, which competes in the British Rugby Football League system.  In 2018, the club is competing in the Championship, having begun to play in 2017 in League 1 and won a promotion in its inaugural season.  The club is noted as being the first North American team to play in the Rugby Football League system, the first fully professional rugby league team in Canada and the world's first transatlantic rugby league team.  Their home stadium is Lamport Stadium (aka "The Den"), which is just a couple blocks from where Gord and I live.  We are season ticket holders and we've renewed for 2019.

Today the Wolfpack were playing the London Broncos.  It was round three of the qualifiers ... the top four teams in our Betfred League (the Wolfpack were first in the Betfred League) play the bottom four teams in the Super League to see who moves or stays in the leagues.

It was a hot sunny day (27C but felt like 35C).  Here are Gord and I before the game began.


The teams huddled before the game began.


Here come the Wolfpack!


God Save the Queen and O Canada were sung before the game.


At 12:30pm, the game began ...


Here's the view from our seats ... looking east towards downtown Toronto.


Towards the end of the first half, Sam, the Wolfpack reporter, was going through the crowd and stopped and asked Gord to call a "try".


At the end of the first half, the Wolfpack were winning 20 - 0.  Yay!


Jefferson, the Wolfpack mascot, danced with the Wolfpack Dance Pack.


You could volunteer to play bubble soccer.


Then the second half began ...


The Wolfpack won 34 - 22, which gives them two wins and one loss in the Qualifiers with two more home games to go.  Today's attendance was almost 7,600.


As always the beer gardens is a popular spot after the game.


It was a fun game (it's always more fun with the Wolfpack win).  The CNE airshow was happening during the game so it was cool to have big loud planes flying overhead.

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