An aboriginal lacrosse team whose Iroquois-issued passports have been at the heart of an international dispute will default on the first game of the sport's world championship on Thursday.

The Iroquois Nationals were grounded Wednesday after England refused to grant them visas. They're holding out hope they'll be allowed into England to compete in a second game set for Saturday.

"We have a lot of high-level calls out for help," Percy Abrams, the team's executive director, said Thursday. The team was at a New York City hotel hours before the start of what was to be the first game of the tournament in Manchester — a match between the Iroquois and England.

The British government said the team wouldn't be allowed to travel to England unless its members used U.S. or Canadian passports. The team continued pressing its case on Thursday, but British officials offered no new comment.

The 23 members are all eligible for those passports but say accepting them would be a strike against their identity.

The British government's decision was announced hours after the U.S. cleared the team for travel on a one-time waiver at the behest of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as New York senator once represented some Iroquois lands.

U.S. authorities initially had refused to accept the passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy because the documents lack security features now required for border crossings in the wake of post-Sept. 11 crackdowns on document fraud and illegal immigration.

Abrams said team organizers planned to meet Thursday to decide whether the team would continue staying in New York City, since remaining in hotels there and flight changes have become expensive.

Film director James Cameron, director of blockbusters such as Avatar and Titanic, has donated $50,000 to help them defray those costs, he said.

The Iroquois team is ranked fourth in the world by the Federation of International Lacrosse. It represents the Haudenosaunee — an Iroquois Confederacy of the Oneida, Seneca, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cayuga and Onondaga nations, whose land stretches from upstate New York into Ontario.