CEO talks of dream start for sport’s first transatlantic team who make their competitive bow on a small field on the outskirts of the West Yorkshire town

“Why can’t it happen? You’ve always got to dream,” replies Eric Perez when asked if Toronto Wolfpack, who make their competitive debut this weekend, can reach the Challenge Cup final. Such bullish claims are what rugby league will have to get used to if the sport’s most daring venture takes off in Canada, but grandiose predictions are part of the appeal which has made the Wolfpack project so intriguing.

Almost two years have passed since the RFL revealed a team from Toronto would enter the English league structure in 2017. It is the kind of exuberant innovation rugby league is famous for but even on this occasion, nobody is quite sure what to expect from such a gargantuan leap into the unknown.

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Backed by an Australian mining tycoon, David Argyle, and with a squad of players many believe could compete in Super League, Toronto will instead enter League 1 this year – and will subsidise the costs of all teams travelling to Toronto as part of their admission by the RFL when their home games begin in May, with crowds 10 times as big as the average third-tier gate expected.

Yet there is no glamour tie at the likes of Leeds or Wigan to kick off the journey, one the Toronto CEO describes as “one of the great sporting stories of our time”. Instead, the sport’s first transatlantic team make their competitive bow on a small field on the outskirts of the West Yorkshire town of Halifax on Saturday afternoon.

Their tie at Siddal in the third round of the Challenge Cup – against the amateur game’s best side – is where the most fascinating of stories really begins but Perez, ever the romantic, has no problem with that whatsoever.

“Halifax is where I stayed when I was convincing the RFL to let me get this up and running, so for me it’s perfect,” he tells the Guardian. “To start off in such a storied tournament with the mystique and drama like the Challenge Cup has is a dream start. The whole thing is so symbolic because Siddal were the first amateur club I’d heard of.”

Perez has brought in a coaching team most clubs would be proud of. The former Great Britain coach Brian Noble is the director of rugby and Perez has recruited one of the most highly regarded young coaches in Paul Rowley to assemble Toronto’s first squad.

“They are the best of the best – it’s the one thing I’m not worried about, the playing side,” he says. “We’re so happy to have them all on board. We’re by far the most talked about team in the UK at the moment. Wigan just won the World Club Challenge but all people want to talk about is Toronto.”

That may well be true in the UK as the sport prepares for its biggest expansion mission yet but what about across the Atlantic, where it really matters? “The whole sporting world has its eyes on this,” he says. “I know the NFL and NHL are watching because if this works, it could all take off. I’m delighted it’s happening in rugby league though because it is the greatest sport.”

Perez fell in love with rugby league while watching a game on TV in Gibraltar a decade ago, and subsequently dedicated his life to the sport, culminating in the foundation of the Wolfpack. The cup, he says, is the perfect debut for Toronto due to a knockout nature so prevalent in European sport which has been, until now, an alien prospect for a North American audience.

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“We don’t have anything like this, a competition where amateurs play professionals,” he explains. “The Stanley Cup used to work like that but they stopped it in like 1918 or something. The FA Cup gets plenty of interest over here so we’re confident this cup – and the beauty of promotion and relegation – will catch the eye of the Toronto public.

“We’re a couple of months away from our first home game but the hype is building. Nobody had heard of this sport before we came into it and now people are stopping me in the street in Toronto saying, ‘This is so cool’. The vibe around it being so different, that’s what will make it work.”

But can it work? Is it sustainable? Nobody knows the answers to those questions yet but one thing is for certain: win or lose, the sporting world is going to hear plenty from Perez and the Wolfpack in the coming years.