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Yet, sadly, five days into a Tour that started with such hope and promise, this is all they have left. The three-game exhibition series against the Cuban National Team they were promised in all the way back in February had seemingly evaporated the second they stepped foot on the island on July 2.

No game on the Fourth of July with Fidel Castro watching from the stands of Jose Marti Stadium. No donning of their special-made white-and-green game jerseys, the ones they were supposed to exchange with the Cuban team after their final match, a tour-ending tradition almost as old as the game itself.

Surrounded by the 40 men who signed on for the opportunity to play in this beautiful, mysterious, complex land, head coach Larry Fox gives the eulogy on a dream borne of goodwill and cooperation but doomed by miscommunication and mistrust.

"I would take you guys anywhere in the world with me," Fox says. "Anywhere in the world." Anywhere, it seems, but Cuba. Fox's voice chokes with emotion as he speaks. The game has given the 53-year-old Fox so much — an identity, a passion, a sport where guts and toughness are just as important as speed and power and talent — the Tour was his chance to be an ambassador for a sport still struggling to gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. And suddenly, it was gone.

Still, Fox had one last order for his players. Go to your room. Get the bag of gifts you brought. Hand them to me. I'll get them to the Cuban team. Even now, with the Tour in shambles and a hurricane bearing down on them, he hadn't given up. The powers that be in the Cuban government had stopped his team from playing. It would not stop his team from giving. One by one, bags appeared at Fox's feet. Clothes and medicine. Compact discs and batteries. Shoes and Livestrong bracelets. "This is what kills me," Fox said. "This (giving the gifts) is what it's about. Our good intentions were turned over to, and I'm going to use their word for it, 'subsidizers.' We went from getting in a couple of games to us Americans giving gifts and that's it."

How did it turn out like this? No one knows. Not the Cuban National Team. Not Sean Reddick, who spent a year jumping through all the hoops the U.S. government and the Cuban government put in front of him to put the Tour together. And certainly not the players, who can't help but wonder how their Tour devolved into one detour after another, though everyone has their theories."Let's blame it on Castro," said team captain Wadie Zacca, half-joking. "That's what everybody else does." When Reddick and Tom Napierkowski first floated out the idea of going to Cuba a year ago while sitting on a beach in the Cayman Islands, they weren't trying to make a political statement. Traveling to Cuba wasn't about trying to help along the relations between two countries that haven't been friends for 50 years or hammering the Cuban team into submission in front of the man who is either a tyrant or a rebel, depending on which side of the political bed you get up on in the morning. The rugby world is a tight knit group. Members of the Hammerheads get up at 4 a.m. to watch live matches from Europe or Australia on cable. They know the names of the best players in New Zealand and argue ad nauseum about the game. Strategy. Styles. Who's tough (the big, ugly, sturdy guys up front) and who's not (namely, the skinny, pretty fast guys in the back).

Reddick knew the Cubans were trying to establish their credentials with the Caribbean Rugby Union and the International Rugby Board. A goodwill exhibition or three against the U.S. probably wouldn't hurt. He scanned the Internet, eventually contacting Chikun Chao, the president of the Cuban Rugby Development Committee and coach of Indes Caribe, a select team that occasionally travels to play international competition. Chao told Reddick the Cubans have hosted teams before, including a club from Arizona in 2001. Chao welcomed the opportunity to play the Americans. "He assured me that Cuban teams had hosted other teams before," Reddick said. "We've been operating based upon (the idea that we would play.)"

Plans were made. Twenty-five Hammerheads signed up for the Tour before Reddick decided to make an open call to any interested players. Hey, why bring one squad when you can bring two for twice the price? Guys came from all over the state and all over the country. Orlando. Boston. Chicago. Tulsa. Players living in the state traveled to Estero every Saturday in June, including a handful who woke up at 4 a.m. to drive from Key West to the Pop Warner fields on Williams Road to practice with their new teammates as Fox prepared them for what (he hoped) would be the fight of their lives. There's a shirt Fox would wear during these grueling four-hour workouts. On the back of it is a passage from "Henry V" by William Shakespeare. "For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother," it reads. It's a tribute to the fraternity of a game in which the players pride themselves on their brutality on the pitch and their brotherhood off it. Somewhere between Estero and Havana, something got lost in the translation.

The first sign of trouble arose before the team even landed at Jose Marti International Airport. Fox and Reddick had both received somewhat mixed messages from their contacts in Cuba in the days leading up to the team's departure. Apparently, things were still up in the air. Neither Fox or Reddick told the players. The trip was already paid for, no use in alarming the players. Besides, the problems might be minor. They weren't familiar with the customs. Maybe this is how it always worked when foreign teams traveled to Cuba. Once in the city though, barely 48 hours before their first game, Reddick heard things might be falling apart. Early Sunday morning, several players traveled to Jose Marti Stadium. The rugby posts were up. The field, however, wasn't lined and the grass hadn't been mowed. Uh-oh.

Fox spent that first morning running in a cab from one side of the town to the other, searching for a place to practice. Finally, he finds an open field at Ciudad tu Salud Practica Deportes. There, Fox breaks the news. There will be no game on Independence Day. The other two games, set for July 6 and July 9, are very much in doubt. Fox points to the row of cabs that carried them in groups of four and five halfway across town. Anybody that wants to blow off practice is welcome. Enjoy the rest of your week in Havana, he tells them. Nobody leaves. For the next two hours, they practice. A group of children playing kickball watches, eyeing the large group of duffel bags sitting at one end of the field. They are stuffed with shoes and tape and clothes. Ward Dement sits sentry on top of one of the bags. His left leg is in a cast. The Sarasota native tore his Achilles during the last Saturday practice before the trip. He's now the world's tallest (6-foot-7) equipment manager. For most of practice, Fox splits the team into two groups. He's still trying to figure out who to put on the 'A' team and who to put on the 'B' team, just in case there's a match, just in case things stop unraveling. A pick-up baseball game on an adjoining ballfield breaks up. A dozen Cubans walk by, stopping to watch 40 Americans run around the muddy, clumpy field, yelling in rugby shorthand to each other. "Move it left, move it left." "Here. Here."The Cubans laugh. The sport is still largely a curiosity in a country raised on boxing and baseball.

Practice is angry. The players are upset. With no game on the horizon, disappointment seeps out of them. Fox knows he's close to losing them for good. They didn't spend their money to practice on a broken down field with a mud puddle at one-end and foot-long weeds at the other. Not that there aren't entertaining moments. In the parking lot, a young man ambles towards the Audi sedan one of the players rented for the week. In a country riddled with poverty, where most of those lucky enough to have cars are driving Chevys and Plymouths and Fords from the Eisenhower administration, the Audi sticks out like, well, a large group of Americans tackling each other in the middle of the only Communist outpost west of China still standing. Less than 30 seconds later, the kid takes off with the entire stereo. A handful of players half-heartedly give chase. "Como se dice why did you get the most expensive car in all Havana," says Michael Westenberger. Fox brings them together at the end of practice. He's trying to salvage their spirits. "Good job guys," he says. "Way to work out there." Arms in. Somebody counts it off "One, two, three, Mojito," "Mojito," they shout. "Hey, I heard Castro is going to have fireworks for us (July 4)," someone says. The players laugh. They trudge back to the taxis. They're less than 100 miles from the United States. Maybe if they squint real hard on Monday night, they can catch the show coming from Key West.

Above all else, rugby is a game of traditions and rituals, some of which are universal. When a player scores their first try in a match, for example, they have to undergo a "Zulu." How you celebrate a zulu is up to you. For some clubs, a zulu is taking off your clothes and running naked around a circle of your teammates. For others, it's getting whacked by your teammates with their game jerseys. It doesn't really matter how you do it, just so long as it's done. Then there are those traditions each club adapts for its own purpose. For the Naples Rugby Club, one of those traditions is "Super Happy Fun Ball." Which explains why Mike LaRe has his shirt off in the middle of El Ajibe, an open-air restaurant on the south side of Havana. In his right hand, LaRe holds the "Super Happy Fun Ball," a "gift" from teammate Bill MacDonough. The rule is simple. If you handed the small, multi-colored ball, you are obligated to do whatever the person who gives you the ball says, so long as it's not borderline illegal. What LaRe is doing isn't necessarily illegal, it's just funny. He curls one arms over his bald head and starts scratching. Then he bounds from one table to the next, picking up food and stuffing it in his mouth. The players roar. The wait staff watches and rolls their eyes while the tourists in the other half of the restaurant peek over their menus. The guys haven't been there 20 minutes, and already someone's taken their shirt off. It's going to be a long night. Five minutes later, somebody else spills a drink. The chant begins. "Shoot the boot, shoot the boot." Steve Mommaerts sheepishly stands on a chair while his teammates search for the biggest, nastiest shoe they can find. Once a shoe is chosen, it's filled to the rim with beer. Mommaerts is well-versed in what's next. He brings the shoe to his lips and starts chugging. It's gross. It's hysterical. It's rugby. Even the waiters are laughing.

The team dinner was Fox's idea. He thought it would be a good way for the players to get to know each other on the eve of a match. Only now there is no match. Instead, the dinner serves a different purpose: to boost morale. For the next four hours, the players trade war stories, doing all the things that guys do when there's food, drink and testosterone involved. At one point, a player trades his polo shirt for one of the wait staff's white Guayabera shirts with "Havana Club" stitched over the pocket. Suddenly, the dinner evolves into a swap meet. The Cuban wait staff happily accepts the trade. They have more work shirts at home. They don't have polo shirts from America. It's a nice moment, seeing four dozen American men and a half-dozen Cubans reaching out to each other. They talk to each other in broken sentences, some of the Americans butchering Spanish, some of the Cubans talking in politely stacatto English.

Turns out, the "barriers" the players thought they'd encounter with the Cuban people never actually existed. The Cubans pepper them with questions about America. The players are only too happy to answer. They sing and shout and (for the most part) stay fully clothed. There are supposed to be two other pregame meals like this. It's on the itinerary, the one that's growing more useless by the minute.

Instead of celebrating the Fourth of July on a pitch in the middle of a stadium, Reddick, Fox and a handful of the players spend the holiday making phone calls to various departments of the Cuban government looking for answers. They quickly learn this isn't America. They aren't the home team. The rights they take advantage of so freely in the States don't apply here. No one at Cuba Deportes, part of the Cuban department of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) will speak to them. Chikun Chao, the Cuban coach, is no help. He doesn't know why they aren't playing either. He took the entire week off work so he could coach the team against the Americans. Rumors spread. Someone thinks problems arose when the Miami Herald ran a story about the Tour a couple of days before the team left. The story mentions the Americans bringing a TV crew along for the trip. Chao is quoted in an e-mail. There's too much attention, Fox says. Nobody in the Cuban government will bless the games. Is it out of fear? Indifference? Nobody seems to know. "Nobody will sign off on it because they're afraid that the guy above them won't sign off on it," Fox says. "The thing you have to realize is, you're in a communist country here. The rules (we live by) don't apply." Still, Fox hopes for the best. In fact, he's come up with a plan. Instead of a "match" against the Cubans, why not hold a "coaching clinic" on Wednesday and invite the Cubans along. "If a rugby match breaks out, so be it," Fox says.

While Reddick, Tom Napierkowski and Alexis Edelstein wait inside the Cuban Deportes office on Tuesday morning, hoping someone will see them, Fox puts the players through a two-hour midday workout in a weed and rock riddled field in Guanabo, a small resort town 40 minutes east of Havana. The field adjoins the beach. You can hear the waves crash and children play in water that really is that shade of blue you see in postcards but never thought actually existed. A Cuban officer stands sentry, watching the team go through drill after drill. He radios someone. He doesn't interrupt, simply staring stone-faced as the players run and tackle and shout and yell. It's 95 degrees. There isn't a cloud in the sky or a game on the horizon. Yet the players go through the motions without complaint. They're still battling for spots on a team that might never take the field. Four young boys — Yoisvel, Alain, Jose Luis and Yosill — watch intently. Steve Dutton, battling the flu, takes a break from practice. The kids ask to play with one of the practice balls. Dutton throws with them, teaching them the proper underhanded toss. The boys want to know if the rugby match will be on the television. When the players tell them they don't know, the kids invite the players back to Guanabo next week. The kids, all teammates on the Guanabo soccer team, have a game. It's at 2. They want to show the Americans what they can do.

Back at small hut on the beach, the team goes on with a pig roast that was supposed to be a join outing with themselves and the Cuban team. The Cubans haven't shown. Morale and optimism are ebbing. Three military officers flank the hut. They keep an eye on the Americans. Their presence, though quiet, is disconcerting. Half the team wants to carry on business as usual, the other half is trying to temper things so as not to attract too much attention. At one point, though, Kevin Biada, a former Barron Collier High football player who joined the rugby club at the University of Florida before returning home four months ago, gets stuck with the Super Happy Fun Ball. His teammates take apart the last remnants of the greasy pig carcass that just became dinner and wipe the snout, skin and bones over his body. He runs a quarter-mile down the beach, past tourists who grab each other and point at Biada as he jogs, his skin literally boiling in the late-afternoon sun.

The guy is huge. Even standing in the middle of a dozen Hammerhead players, he towers over them, a 6-foot-8 mountain amidst 6-foot hills. Nobody's sure what his name is. Reddick and Napierkowski ran into him — some say he's a former member of the Cuban Olympic team, a shot-putter, others say he used to help run the Cuban National Rugby team back in the day, maybe they're both right — on Santa Maria beach while searching for the pig roast. The guy was holding a rugby ball. He was with his girlfriend. Reddick and Napierkowski thought he was headed for the roast. He wasn't. But they got to talking. The guy said he knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. And so that's why he's here, standing near the pool at Hotel Vedado a little after dark on Tuesday night. The giant speaks to the group of players around him in muted tones. This is what their Tour has boiled down to, a clandestine meeting out of the watchful eyes of the police officer manning the front door of the hotel. The giant tells them he doesn't think he can get anything together. He shakes hands and walks out. "That's that," someone says.

Wednesday morning, there's one last meeting as Fox tries to resurrect the team's spirits. He asks the players if they want to play each other in a scrimmage. They've done all this work, they might as well go out and hit somebody. The players decide to pack it in. Their heart just isn't in it. Hurricane Dennis is bearing down on Cuba, with Florida next on his hit list. They have families they want to get back to. "None of us mind contact of course, but nobody wants to get hurt just playing each other," David Beal says. "It's hard to play when you're not going 100 percent. We didn't want that."

There's a tap Fox's back. A skinny young man with curly black hair in a blue polo shirt and a bald, sturdy-looking guy with biceps erupting from his t-shirt are standing behind. "Chikun Chao," the skinny one says to Fox, extending his hand. At last, the Cubans have arrived. It's Wednesday night, right after Fox gives his final pep talk, just as the players start to pile the gifts they've brought at his feet. Chao introduces himself and Andres Acuno, a first-row player on the Cuban team, to Fox. Moments later they're joined by Alexis Figueras, one of the backs. The Americans pop up to shake hands and talk. The party spills out to the pool. Mike Spontak, a Chicagoan who heard about the trip on the Internet and met his new teammates for the first time at Miami International Airport moments before take-off, brings down a huge duffel bag. Chao, Acuno and Figueras are overwhelmed as the Americans fight to buy them beer and hand them gifts. "Wow, thank you," Chao says again and again. Why didn't they play? Chao said Cuba's national junior games, scheduled for the week after the three matches were to be played, combined with the attention the matches received in the States led to their cancellation. "There was too much noise," he says. "I read my name in the Miami Herald. It just wasn't the right time. There was too much noise this time. Other times we play teams, there isn't a lot of noise." He says it matter-of-factly. He doesn't look upset or angry. Like the Americans, his team had practiced for the better part of three months to get ready. He's disappointed, but doesn't seem surprised. Born and raised in Cuba, he has a better understanding of how things work. You live in a dictatorship, you're powerless. The games weren't blessed. That's it. Life goes on. The players gather for a photo around the pool. All 45 of them, with the three Cubans sprinkled in the mix. Fox and Chao put their heads together. There's got to be some way they can compete against each other, right? Fox turns to the players and says, "since we can't play, but we've still got to compete, we figured we'd have a contest to see who has the ugliest (player)." Acuno, rubbing his bald head, looks wary. Then Fox calls on Napierkowski, whose nickname is "Shrek," to stand next to Acuno. It's no contest. Napierkowski is, by far, the ugliest guy in the room. "Congratulations," Acuno says, holding Napierkowski's arm aloft in triumph. There will be no game, there will be no blood, but there will be brotherhood. The Cubans stay for a couple hours, talking, laughing, bonding. At one point Pat O'Donnell walks to the front desk. He's half-naked and it has nothing to do with the Super Happy Fun Ball. "I gave them the shirt off my back," he says. Just a little cleaner than he originally thought.

Their dreams of a match gone, their charter flight home still four days away and a Category 4 hurricane beating a path to Havana, there is nothing left for the Hammerheads to do but wait. A handful of players make it home early, flying Cubana Air to Nassau in the Bahamas before heading home. The remaining 40 or so guys stocked up on supplies — water, canned food and beer — and bunkered down in the hotel to wait. Hotel Vedado, like most of the buildings in Havana, has survived countless attacks from Mother Nature. Safety isn't a concern. Sanity is. Tourists staying at other hotels are packed into the lobby of Hotel Vedado. The lobby is a mix of people, languages and body heat. "There were other people in the hotel from England and Sweden, the girls from Sweden said they didn't even have a word in their language for hurricane," Reddick said. The team watches Dennis roar through on Friday night from a covered balcony near the pool. Hurricane party, anyone? The power went out. The team didn't even know if the airport was operational until Reddick and Edelstein went and checked on Sunday morning. When the team finally landed in Miami on Sunday evening, a small cheer rose from the back of the cabin. It was a cheer of relief, not joy. They never played a game, they never did get a chance to wear those green-and-white jerseys with "Cuba Tour 2005" on them. But they did go to Cuba. They did survive. No, the Tour wasn't a success, at least not in the way it was intended. Red tape and natural disasters have a way of rendering the best laid plans useless. "I think these guys took away an impression of Cuba that the propaganda you get on both sides are a little off," Reddick said. "It's not as big and scary a place as everybody makes it out to be."

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