Since 2017 a team called Toronto Wolfpack has been playing in the English rugby league.

Its founder has just been given permission to launch another Canadian team, in Ottawa.

There are also two French teams in the league, from Toulouse and Perpignan.

And a team from New York may join in 2021.

Toronto have played Workington and Whitehaven on their way up the ladder.

If I was a Town or Haven fan, I would be torn at the prospect of being in the same division as a team from another country.

The integrity of the competition is compromised by the inclusion of teams who haven’t earned the right to be there.

Then again, New York!

I’ve travelled around England to watch Carlisle United.

Football has rarely been the highlight of these trips. In a pub or a café, there’s that horrible moment when someone points at their watch and we remember that we have to go and watch a match.

Finding the motivation to leave can be a struggle when the only competition is a pint of warm beer and Showaddywaddy on the jukebox. Imagine if you’ve got the chance to visit the Statue of Liberty.

Maybe one day the Football League will allow foreign teams to join. I can see it now: 20,000 Carlisle United fans travel to Venice when their team plays Venezia.

Thirty two of them go to the match. The rest spend their weekend having gondola rides and eating Cornettos.

Being a sports fan is like being an accidental tourist. Even during a match you can enjoy a flavour of local life.

While watching Carlisle play at Grimsby and Hartlepool I have spent much of the games gazing out at trawlers on the North Sea.

And marvelling at how they can turn faster than Carlisle’s defenders.

When I think about watching Carlisle at Darlington, what springs to mind is not the football.

It is the journey back home and the sight of a couple having sex in the middle of a roundabout.

Some drivers are probably still driving around it.

In recent years rugby league teams have adopted suffixes like Wolves, Warriors and Giants. The league’s foreign teams have joined in: Catalans Dragons. Toronto Wolfpack. Toulouse Olympique.

It’s fair to say that Cumbria’s teams have not been swept along.

Workington Town’s name sounds wildly adventurous when compared with that of their neighbours: Whitehaven Rugby League Football Club.