Men’s Rugby: Cold Front

Concordia’s Men’s Rugby Team Drops Another Game to UdeM Carabins

SportsVince Morello — Published October 10, 2015

The Carabins eventually proved too difficult of an obstacle to overcome. The Stingers lost 28-9 on Friday evening, this time at UdeM’s home field, the CEPSUM.

Stingers head coach Clive Gibson summed up his opinion of the game in one word, “Terrible.”

“There was certain aspects of our game that improved,” he continued. “The lineout was much improved, there was some decent tactical kicking and after that I’m running out of good things to say.”

The Carabins are guaranteed to finish atop their pool thanks to Friday night’s victory, all at the expense of the team that defeated them in last year’s semifinal playoff game.

“We came prepared, had a good week of practice, we were pretty confident coming into it but they proved more aggressive on defense, we just couldn’t break the lines.” said Graeme McClintock of the Stingers.

Concordia opened the scoring of the match, as fly half Moritz Wittman converted a penalty kick to give Concordia an early 3-0 lead.

UdeM’s Benjamin Hoibian, the team’s most valuable player at last night’s game scored a try, and following a two-point conversion by kicker Rémi De Marassé, the Carabins had a 7-3 lead.

Concordia brought the score to 7-6 with a penalty kick, before the Carabins converted a penalty of their own to go into halftime with a 10-6 lead.

“We wanted to slow the game down, play our game,” said Stingers captain Andreas Krawczyk. “It worked for the first half, we had the ball for 30 minutes, we didn’t score but we were driving and driving. That’s what we wanted to do.”

The Stingers only scored one more time in the match, while the Carabins added 18 more points in the second half to earn their second victory over Concordia this year.

“UdeM was working with a sense of urgency. They had a desire to get that ball and move forward with and we were slow to react and get on balls,” Gibson said. “When we did get them, we had no urgency to go forward.”

With two games left, the Stingers still have a chance at making the playoffs but will be taking steps to ensuring they end their season on a good note.

“We’re going to take the weekend off, come back, practice, refocus, rebuild and hopefully come out stronger, better, faster,” said Krawczyk.