Toronto Wolfpack take leap into the muddy unknown in rural Yorkshire | Aaron Bower

The extravagant promises of silverware and sellout fixtures on both sides of the Atlantic leading up to Toronto Wolfpack’s UK debut will have no doubt had any Torontonians who had bothered to get up early enough to watch their first-ever competitive game eager to see what the fuss was all about. Had they not done their research, they will have certainly got a real shock.

In many ways, this was the perfect mixture for an encapsulating bow for rugby league’s newest club – set amidst a stunning backdrop of rural Yorkshire, the sport’s bold new project, with all its riches and talent behind it, visiting a true amateur stronghold with over a century of history.

Toronto have made no secret of their desire to soar through the professional ranks and reach Super League following their admission into the sport last year. However, this match was anything but the formality many expected, as turgid conditions and a courageous effort from amateurs Siddal combined to produce a spectacle unlike anything any Canadian who has caught the rugby league bug could have ever imagined.

The unreal feeling will also have been all too real for those Siddal supporters who had rocked up early to the brand new clubhouse. Toronto’s director of rugby, the former Great Britain coach, Brian Noble, could be seen chatting and taking pictures with fans along with Adam Fogerty, the former St Helens prop-turned actor, who is also a director of the Wolfpack.

Suddenly, Siddal’s little ground was, for one day at least, the centre of the rugby league universe. One custodian of the club reckoned they would normally attract “about 400 for a big game”; the lure of the Wolfpack brought more than 1,000 through the gates here and it may have been more too, had it not been for the last lashings of Storm Doris.

“It’s like the icing on the cake of 100 years of history,” said Graham Bradley, the man who built Siddal’s clubhouse with his own hands and money. “What more can you say? We’re playing the world’s first transatlantic team and the interest in it will do wonders for Siddal.”

But how do people feel about a project which the Toronto CEO, Eric Perez, hyped this week as “one of the great sporting stories of our time”? “I’m naturally a sceptic but I’ve looked at it and I think the whole rugby league community should get behind it and back it,” Bradley said. “The sport needs an injection of something. Maybe this is what it needs.”

However, not everyone was as excited. “I might be wrong in saying this but if we can’t make it work in Scotland or in the south of England, how the hell are we going to get it going in Toronto,” asked Colin Barnes, who still watches Siddal after playing for them in the 1960s.

But at times, those views felt like an anomaly rather than the majority verdict. There were dozens with broad Yorkshire accents sporting Toronto shirts, a sure sign that the concept has caught the eye of the rugby league public in the sport’s heartlands – although it is how it goes down across the Atlantic which will surely be crucial to the project’s success.

Toronto’s playing roster possessed professional appearances numbering into the thousands, but this was so odd an afternoon that it only felt right there was the threat of a real cup upset to go along with the atmosphere – which was parochial to say the least.

Most of Toronto’s English-born players will have anticipated that, but the expressions of some, such as the former NRL superstar Fuifui Moimoi, told a wonderful story in itself. At times, Moimoi looked amazed by the fact he was trudging around in the mud and being hurled around by his Siddal rivals.

Moimoi was sent off in the closing stages of Toronto’s 14-6 win – “an unnecessary decision,” according to the Toronto coach, Paul Rowley. Before that, his side had been pushed all the way by their part-time counterparts – with Toronto’s first-ever try actually coming from a North American player, Virginia-born Ryan Burroughs. “That’s a nice story,” Noble said afterwards.

“They’ll have thought they were coming for a walkover, this mob,” one fan could be heard saying in the clubhouse as Siddal took a 6-4 second-half lead before Toronto fought back to win. By that time, hundreds had taken shelter and cramped inside to avoid the horrendous conditions but it could not dampen the enthusiasm of both sides following a heartening, albeit very different, start for rugby league’s boldest step into the unknown yet.