EVERYTHING about Crusaders’ opening Engage Super League fixture was surreal, from the snow on the ground — rugby league is nominally a summer sport — to the hymns of praise that rang out in Wrexham for the 65 minutes that the Welsh nomads looked as if they might pull off the competition’s greatest upset against defending champions Leeds.

As followers of Wrexham FC will admit, there has been precious little to cheer in the town. Now, almost overnight, the Racecourse Ground, home to the Blue Square Premier side, has become a dual-purpose venue with the Crusaders’ transplantation from south Wales to the sport-deprived north.

“Is it always as good as this?” asked one of the many league novices among a vibrant 10,334 full-house crowd for Friday’s rattling season-opener, which Leeds eventually won 34-6. “Build a team and they will come,” was the message on the night. The revamped Crusaders, under new ownership in Wrexham, have been born of chaos and crisis, but nobody could have left the ground feeling that this is a venture with no future.

Newport was supposed to be the club’s home after Bridgend was abandoned, but Wrexham, 125 miles away, stepped in once owner Leighton Samuel had given up his Super League dream for south Wales. The team put together at short notice had barely trained, let alone played a game, but Crusaders’ mix of Englishmen, Antipodeans and one bona fide Welshman, half-back Lloyd White, put the wind up Leeds for more than an hour. The insurrection was ended by five Rhinos tries in a runaway finish but Brian Noble’s team had stamped their mark.

“We only got together on January 4. We were in south Wales at one point, north Wales the next,” said Noble, inset. “That lack of preparation did for us at the end, but the players can be proud of what they achieved for 65 minutes, and we will improve. There are some fantastic things happening here and we’ve been made fabulously welcome. We need to educate people but we’ve the whole of Wales to go at. I’m meeting South Wales Scorpions [in Neath], to get some conduits between us.

“Let’s not forget there’s a lot of people playing in mid-Wales and north Wales. That opens avenues now, but that will take a lot longer. The short-term focus is for the players to keep working as hard as they have been, and they will be rewarded with quite a few wins this year.”

Noble will have two of his Australian cavalry arriving in time for Friday’s trip to his old club Wigan, with second-row Weller Hauraki and full-back Rhys Hanbury expected to be joined shortly by the signing of a specialist scrum-half.

Tries by Ben Jeffries, Daryl Millard and Aaron Murphy helped Wakefield to an 18-10 win yesterday against Harlequins at Twickenham Stoop.