Canada Travel Guide

Professional Canadian football , played under the aegis of the Canadian Football League (CFL) , is largely overshadowed by the National Football League in the US, chiefly because the best home-grown talent moves south in search of better money while NFL castoffs move north to fill the ranks. The two countries' football games vary slightly, but what differences do exist tend to make the Canadian version more exciting. In Canada the playing field is larger and there are twelve rather than eleven players on each team . There is also one fewer down in a game - ie after kickoff the attacking team has three, rather than four, chances to move the ball forward ten yards and score a first down en route to a touchdown . Different rules about the movement of players, and the limited time allowed between plays, results in a faster-paced and higher-scoring sport, in which ties are often decided in overtime or in a dramatic final-minute surge.

Despite the sport's potential, the CFL has suffered a blight of media and fan indifference, which has caused immense financial problems, though recently the crisis seems to be easing, with high-profile celebrity investment. The CFL has tried to expand into the US over the past decade, but all the expansion teams folded at the end of the 1995/96 season. The season , played by two divisions of eight teams, lasts from June to November, each team playing a match a week - 72 matches in all. At the end of the season are the play-offs, which culminate with the hotly contested Grey Cup - which the Toronto Argonauts have won twenty-one times, most recently in 1997. Tickets are fairly easy to come by, except for important games, and vary in cost from $20 to a Grey Cup final price of over $150.