They saw the scene in Montreal where Team Canada skated out to spine-tingling ovations for the World Cup of Hockey, and dreamed out loud about striking that same visceral chord. But when you're ranked 99th in the world, in a country lukewarm to your sport to begin with, dreaming out loud about sold-out buildings and hysterical fans is as good as it's going to get for a while.
With the Olympics just finished, the World Cup of Hockey just starting and an NHL work stoppage looming on the horizon, Canucks aren't spending too much time getting fired up about a team that's one step ahead of the Congo.
The Canadian men's program has a lot of rebuilding to do, both on the pitch and in their country's fickle, preoccupied consciousness, and nobody knows it better than them.
"We've got to win them over,'' head coach Frank Yallop said of this country's hibernating fans.
"We need to play well and we need to get results, it's as simple as that. We're not going to get 50,000 people in there if we're getting beat all the time.
"But the fans will come and support us once we show that we're capable of doing well in the games we play in.''
WEATHER AND RUSSIA
As of yesterday there were just under 10,000 tickets sold for tonight's crucial World Cup qualifying match with Honduras (7 p.m. at Commonwealth Stadium).
A week of bad weather and Canada-Russia on the ice tonight won't help with the walk-up.
Ten grand is double what they've drawn anywhere else in Canada, but it's spit in the ocean compared with what some teenage girls drew two summers ago - and doesn't come close to what our hockey team is doing.
"The guys talked about what Canada is doing in the World Cup of Hockey and it gets you going because you want to do well for Canada,'' said Yallop.
"We're dying to really play well and have a really good result for this country and for the game of soccer. They want it badly.''
Good, because after a 2-0 loss in their round-robin opener to Guatemala, they need it badly. A loss means they'll be faced with the virtually impossible task of going 3-0-1 in their last four games, three of which are in Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala. In other words, the Congo will be all over that 99th-place ranking of theirs.
"They're determined to put the Guatemala result behind us and move on,'' said Yallop. "We've got five games to make it right.''
One game, actually. Lose tonight and their World Cup chase is all but over and they can book their next home game in an elevator.
Win and they're right back in the mix.
"We need our best players to be playing and we have that against Honduras,'' said Yallop, who's awfully relieved to have English Premier League striker Tomasz Radzinski, Ipswich Town defender Jason deVos and English second division forward Iain Hume back in the fold after missing the last game.
"I'm expecting those guys to make a big difference to us. (Radzinski) has frightening speed and pace and ability to score goals.
"That really makes any team better. You can't guarantee wins, but you can guarantee that we're going to play a lot better than we did against Guatemala.''
STRESSED THE ATTACK
This will be Edmonton's first look at the Canadians in four years and the players say they might be in for a bit of a surprise. The dry, defensive, trapping style favoured by former coach Holger Osieck has been replaced by a more offensive game under Yallop.
"He's really tried to stress the attacking side of the game,'' said defender Mark Watson. "In the past, if we're being realistic, we haven't had a lot of flair or a lot of options going forward. We've tried to be very solid defensively and if we could get a goal or two it would be a bonus. But now we're very dangerous going forward. You look at our attacking players and they're very dangerous.''
They'll never be a run-and-gun side, nobody here thinks they're Brazil, but they are not the Anaheim Mighty Ducks of soccer, either.
"I like the whole rounded game,'' said Yallop. "We don't want to be the kind of team that goes forward with gay abandon, tries to score tons of goals, we're not trying to do that. We're trying to tactically have players in correct positions where they can hurt the team they're playing against. And we have those players.''
Scoring first tonight against a 1-0 team (5-2 over Costa Rica) that would take a 0-0 road tie in a heartbeat, is critical.
"We're not sitting back, we're going to attack them,'' said Yallop. "We need to score first at home. If we score the first goal, then we'll see what it's all about.''
