Sunday afternoon at Lamport Stadium, the Toronto Wolfpack host Toulouse Olympique in a second-division rugby league semifinal that will vault the winner toward a U.K. Super League berth for next season.

The Wolfpack split their regular season series with Toulouse on the way to a league-best 26-1 record, but head coach Brian McDermott says his club didn’t struggle with motivation for a third Toulouse match.

A win would send the Wolfpack directly to the second-division Grand Final on Oct. 5, with a Super League spot at stake. Winning there would propel the Wolfpack to a bigger stage and bigger money, and mark another huge step forward for the sport in North America.

Against that backdrop, McDermott says getting his players pumped up for Sunday wasn’t a challenge.

“You don’t threaten players with the ramifications if they don’t win,” McDermott said after a midweek training session. “You encourage them by saying, ‘Guess what. If we win this, we’re part way to a really good story.’”

The original plan had the Wolfpack in Super League by now.

Two seasons ago they arrived in the U.K.-based Rugby Football League as an expansion club, and made history as that circuit’s first North American entry. The 2017 edition steamrolled third-division foes and earned quick promotion to the second division. They also built a loyal fan base, averaging roughly 7,000 spectators at home games.

From there, Wolfpack management hoped to enact the final phase of their two-year plan to earn a spot in Super League, where revenue would rise, costs would drop and the club would become profitable.

But real life flipped the script on the Wolfpack.

Last October, they lost to the London Broncos in the Million Pound Game, missing out on a promotion. A second stint in the second division meant another year of paying travel expenses for opponents visiting Lamport Stadium.

And where the club took pride in low ticket prices and an inclusive, family-friendly atmosphere, majority stakeholder David Argyle fumbled public goodwill with a racist comment to an opposing player after a late-April win over the Swinton Lions.

After the match, Swinton prop Jose Kenga, who is Black, approached a teammate engaged in an on-field conversation with Argyle. Kenga said Argyle looked at him and said, “Do they allow Black people in Swinton?” Argyle issued a public apology and stepped down as the club’s CEO, and the league later fined him 7,500 pounds.

Then in August, the club cancelled TV broadcasts of two late-season games. Until then, the club had paid to broadcast all of its games in the U.K., expanding the audience but running up costs.

“We were the most televised (RFL) team if you look at the some of the games,” said Wolfpack vice-president Jon Pallett. “That’s because we funded 20 games to be broadcast. It’s a significant investment over the course of a season.”

But the post-season will air on Sky Sports in the U.K., and the second-division playoff structure guarantees the Wolfpack at least two more home games.

While Sunday’s winner heads straight to the Grand Final, the loser plays a repechage match against the winner of Saturday’s match between Featherstone and York City. If the Wolfpack lose Sunday, they would host the last-chance qualifier on Sept. 29.

Fullback Gareth O’Brien, who led the Wolfpack with 260 points, says he isn’t thinking about his club’s regular-season record against Toulouse. He says the French-based club — which rode a free-flowing, improvisational style to a second-place finish — still presents a stiff challenge.

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“It’s going to be a massive test,” O’Brien said. “They’re a really dangerous team, so we’re going to have to be on our game, defensively especially.”

McDermott isn’t assuming his club will dismantle Toulouse, either. Wednesday afternoon he ran a fast-paced, hard-hitting practice session aimed at priming the Wolfpack for the energy they’ll face on Sunday.

“Our players need to run at game pace at least once through the week,” he said. “Obviously we’ve missed that contact (after a bye week). Game pace (and) that intensity … we needed to create some of that today.”