European elite keen to exclude outsiders

WHICHEVER way you care to define the i-word, it was an interesting few hours for Canadian sport.

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On July 6 in Dallas - we're taking our bearings from the British calendar here, not the Texan onethe nation's footballers spot-kicked their way past Venezuela in front of 51,000 supporters and found themselves in the semi-finals of the Copa America tournament at the first time of asking.

A little later in Ottawa, life wasn't nearly so much fun. Canada's rugby players, quite the source of pride from Vancouver Island to the Gulf of St Lawrence when they were asking tough questions of the All Blacks and the Springboks at consecutive World Cups in the 1990s, leaked 73 points to a Scotland side so light on big names and star quality, not even Gregor Townsend could be sure of recognising his starting XV as they gathered in the hotel lobby.

As the answer to the question is so blindingly obvious, please don't bother to ask yourselves where the gaze of the country's population is likely to be fixed when there's no ice hockey on the telly. Football, the sporting opium of most of the people most of the time, is doing a proper job on rugby in parts of the planet where rugby was once stronger than football - a fact that might give the governing class of the union code food for thought.