The Canadian Wolverines

We visited Kingston, which is approximately 2.5hrs east of Toronto.  It was the venue of the International Rugby League match between the Canadian Wolverines and the USA Tomohawks.   Troy was recently selected as part of the run-on side for the Wolverines as a winger.   Here is a little amateur footage of the Wolverines trial match (to select the representative team):

Canadian Rugby League Trial game

The game was on Sunday lunchtime and the weather gods were very kind to us with a lovely sunny day - this brought a fairly decent crowd to watch the event.  Rugby League does not have a good following here in Canada.  Most people have never heard of it, let alone watched a game.  Some Canadian's are familiar with Rugby Union though.  USA have more experience than Canada as they have a fairly good competition with approximately 12 teams in the comp.  Canada is not so lucky, the game against USA on Sunday was the second game they had ever really played as a team (and Troy's first real game).

Troy played really well.  I was very glad he was not in the front line cause some of those USA boys were BIG BIG boys!   The Canadian crowd were groaning and gasping when the players were hitting - I don't think they are used to seeing such big body hits without the protective gear of the gridiron boys!   I was fairly amused to hear people talking in the stands about the game (they clearly have little idea of Rugby League, but nice of them to show up to support it!).  One guy was telling another guy that most games end up with a score line around 60! 

After a pretty average first half, USA had the lead with 22-4.  

I thought this was Troy making a break! but turns out it was another player on his team oops!!

After a much improved second half, the Canadian Wolverines had clawed their way back to 22-16!  With two minutes until full time, Troy got the ball and made an excellent run to gain some much needed metres.  Unfortunately, the forearm (swinging forearm, Troy tells me) from a USA tackler (third man in, the cheating pricks.., Troy tells me) smashed Troy across the bridge of his nose resulting in copious amounts of gushing blood and a broken nose!  He had to leave the field immediately in the final dying moments of the game.   Unfortunately, the Canadian Wolverines lost by six points. 

Here is a picture of Troy after he had reset his nose (himself).  He said it sounded like a really heavy crack:

The bleeding finally stopped after 2.5 hours!  This is how it looked then.

But then Troy sneezed and the blood started GUSHING again!  We had to stop the car and pull over to control the bleeding!  ewwwwww.

We got back to Toronto late Sunday night.   This is the sight I got when we woke up on Monday morning:

Needless to say, Troy is a little sore and sorry today!  Yvonne, please don't freak out - it's worse than it looks.  Ha ha ha.  Oh and he has hurt his wrist, but that doesn't look anywhere near as freaky as his face, so that's not important!

So it looks like Troy's modelling days are over.  He's not sure he has put his nose back in correctly, so we will see how it looks when the swelling goes down a little.

On a positive note, Ice Hockey starts tomorrow!  Let the fun begin!

The weather is really starting to get cool here.  It was 10 degrees until about 10am this morning.  The sun is still nice and warm though, so it's not too bad outside....it's just the chilly wind that rips through you.