The Toronto Wolfpack remind us pro sports are supposed to be fun

Shortly after the Toronto Wolfpack have humiliated their opponents and are in the midst of an endless victory lap, the team's PR guy comes over to let you know what's up.

"We're just waiting on the players and then we'll sing the song."

It's still pretty loud out here on the field, so you probably heard that wrong.

"I'm sorry. You'll what the what?"

"Sing the song."

No, you heard right.

Twenty minutes later, the media is led into the dressing room for the post-victory fight song, which is apparently a thing in rugby.

The players are all standing around a low-slung concrete tomb underneath the decrepit Lamport Stadium. Most are half-naked and holding tallboys. A couple of them are already on their third. A couple more are bleeding.

The lyrics are up on a chalkboard. The players have written the song themselves, which explains all the f-words.

It starts out with a slow groove to Will Grigg's On Fire. This is nice. Like a bunch of bodybuilders and professional killers decided to have a Spring Fling and invite their parents.

All of a sudden, about halfway through, it gets frantic. Some very large people are now bouncing up and down in a very tight space, elbowing each other, throwing their bodies around. They start spraying beer. It's a good thing someone has dragged the pizza boxes off the floor.

As one panicked group, the media lunges for the door, but it's blocked. You're stuck in here with these giant berserkers. You're going to get the full rugby experience today.

When the Wolfpack announced their arrival on the Toronto sports scene a year ago – a trans-Atlantic team playing the more obscure branch of rugby in the lowest rung of the English leagues – it seemed like a stunt. It still does. But stunts are the reason people go to the circus. Done right, stunts work.

This isn't about the sport as such. It's doubtful many of the 7,000 on hand on Saturday understood the nuances of rugby league. They got the basics – 13 men line up and run at 13 other men. When someone is tackled, they stop, line up and do it again. It's essentially bowling with humans instead of balls.

Whenever a penalty was called or a play whistled dead, the crowd did not react. They weren't sure why it happened, or who got the advantage. But they liked the idea of large people hitting each other at speed and, hey, there's craft beer.

At the half, they brought out the hot-dog gun. Not just a gun shaped like a hot dog, but a gun shooting actual hot dogs. One clueless dope retrieved one from the floor and tried presenting it to his girlfriend. She slapped it out of his hand.

The Wolfpack are the only fully professional side in the Kingstone Press League 1. Their opponents are figuratively – and, occasionally, literally – roofers on a stipend. On the weekend, they faced the league's other undefeated side, Barrow.

Barrow scored the first two points. Toronto scored the next 70. I am no expert, but I feel confident this game was not a classic.

It will probably be like that all summer long – blowout after blowout. That's not the allure.

The beauty of this new entrant into a crowded civic sports landscape is the charming shoddiness of its environment and the way the players – some of them top stars on the downward slope of their careers – have embraced an overseas adventure.

Lamport Stadium is wedged uncomfortably into a busy section of downtown. Most penalty kicks at the south end wind up in a parking lot. In one instance, a young boy picked up a ball that had landed beside him. He showed it excitedly to his father, and then the two of them rushed off with it. No one gave chase.

Kicks the other way are in constant danger of sailing onto King Street West. Eventually, you'll be reading about a rugby-related car crash.

By the standard of, say, Toronto FC, this wasn't a sizable gathering, but the players were juiced.

Like rugby union, rugby league is played everywhere. But unlike rugby union, it isn't a top-tier draw in many places. Before some of these guys got here, they might have been performing in front of a few hundred customers. A few thousand seems like a lot to them. Most are from small spots in northern England. The brightness of Toronto – such as they are – has gotten to them.

"When you're driving down the highway to the game and you see the CN Tower, it's all very surreal," Scottish halfback Ryan Brierley said. "We're living a dream."

I am acquainted with another young gentleman who is consistently blown away by the sight of the CN Tower. He's five years old.

The real show was put on after the game ended. The Wolfpack team spent a half-hour walking the periphery of the stadium, shaking hands and talking to the fans. Yes, that's right – talking to them. Most were drinking as they did so.

The star of the show is your new favourite athlete (and I don't care who you are or whether you've seen him play or care at all about rugby), Fuifui Moimoi.

Moimoi is a 37-year-old cartoon bowling ball that has grown arms, legs and a prodigious head of hair, and then come to life. An Australian sports scientist once reckoned that over the course of a game, Moimoi delivers the cumulative impact of a six-tonne truck going 30 kilometres an hour. You're sitting fifty yards from him and he's moving away from you, but when he gets the ball, you feel real terror.

Moimoi was the last man off the field because so many people on hand wanted to speak to him, touch him and get a picture with him. Moimoimania was so frenzied, people were taking selfies of other people taking selfies with the Tongan.

As Moimoi moved slowly around the periphery, two team officials tried to corral him for the song.

"He's got to come in now!" one said, waving his arms.

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" screamed the other beseechingly.

It was no good. They can't move this man on the field, and they're certainly not going to move him off it.

Near the end of his rounds, Moimoi spotted a woman up in the stands waving in his direction. She signalled toward a girl with Down syndrome who seemed too frightened to enter the fray at the edges. Moimoi, who is listed at 230 pounds and probably weighs a few more, ran over, vaulted a six-foot wall and rushed to her side for a long cuddle and a chat. The crowd nearly collapsed in on itself with delight.

As Moimoi finally came off the field, he was pulsing with positive energy. He fairly skipped up the corridor.

"Given the sadistic nature of what people want to see these days, he's quite popular," Toronto coach Paul Rowley said. "Fui likes to smash."

Fui also plainly likes people, as do his teammates.

I've covered a lot of different sports in a lot of different places, and while I have certainly seen at least this much love given off by spectators, I don't think I've ever seen so much of it reflected back from the objects of their esteem. It was remarkable to behold.

It's hard to say if rugby league will catch on in Toronto. It's harder still to say if anyone will make any real money off it, or if it'll graduate to a better stadium, or get a mainstream TV deal. But those are the dreary financial concerns that build a wall between athletes and their fans. The richer they get, the more tenuous their human connection with the people who made them that way. That's axiomatic.

For at least one day, it was wonderful to be reminded how much fun pro sports can be when the main goal is more than a win or a paycheque. When it's actually about the people there. All of them, for just a moment, being together.