Rugby World Cup: From famine to feast for Canada's die-hard fanatics

Canada's Adam Kleeberger on the charge. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Big Canadian Stephen "Shotgun" Sparrow looks nothing like his last name. He is a burly prop forward, still playing at the age of 47 in his hometown, Calgary.

And no, he didn't get his nickname by shooting birds. It was bestowed on him by a rugby coach, a New Zealander. "You have to have a nickname in a rugby team."

His is a reference to an armed robbery. He took a bullet through his thigh when two men held up a store where he was working about 15 years ago.

Sitting in the Napier sun this week he is in heaven. Back home, he says, rugby is a non-event. It never makes the papers, is never seen on national television.

"We used to get a rugby programme on Sunday mornings but that stopped about 10 years ago."

For enthusiasts from Canada and other countries finishing their World Cup this week, it has been like coming from a famine to a feast..

"Whenever I go into a room there is quality rugby on the television," Sparrow says. "I can hardly bear to leave."

Ice hockey enjoys the lion's share of attention in Canada, as rugby does in New Zealand, baseball in the United States and Japan, soccer in England, Scotland and Italy.

Norma Shipley from Edmonton, following the World Cup with her partner, South African expatriate Laurens van Rensberg, believes rugby has a deeper hold on New Zealand than hockey has in Canada.

"Rugby seems to have a more personal connection than hockey has," she says. "People identify more with the teams and players."

The difference, she agrees, may be hockey has been professional for much longer than rugby has been.

Rugby remains an amateur game in Canada. Just about all of the team preparing to meet the All Blacks on Saturday have regular jobs.

The game is strongest in British Columbia and Ontario, which are a continent apart. They say coach Kieran Crowley sometimes has to fly eight hours to see a player he might want for the national team.

There is no national competition. Each province runs its own contest between clubs.

It is a summer sport in Alberta. This season ended just in time for the World Cup. Shotgun Sparrow has six clubmates here, though they are not travelling together.

"We'd drive each other crazy," he says, "so we're meeting on match days but going our own way in between."

They have seen Whangarei, where Canada opened its World Cup with a good win over Tonga, and Napier twice, for matches against France and Japan.

The team's itinerary has left its supporters plenty of time for travel to other games. Sparrow went to Rotorua and saw Ireland play Russia last Sunday.

Tomorrow he has tickets to South Africa-Samoa in Auckland, then it is to Wellington where Canada will finish their World Cup playing the All Blacks.

"It's been fantastic," Sparrow says, and compatriots agree with him.

There were so many red Canadian shirts in Napier on match day this week you could believe the game's small following in that country were all here, but they are not all Canadians.

Laurens van Rensberg said, "We've been greeting people in Canadian shirts and getting replies in strong Kiwi accents."

Norma Shipley has a photo on her phone, taken somewhere in the country, of a group rigged out in the uniform of the Mounties. "They had gone to a lot of trouble," she said, "all wearing the right trousers and smart serge jackets.

"We asked them where they came from," she laughs, "and they said Wanganui."

That is the stadium of four million.