Stingers Weather the Rain

Men’s Rugby Team Gets First Win of the Season

SportsDavid Kaufmann — Published September 24, 2012

“We have the horses, we have just got to find a way to finish much more easily than we are right now,” said Stingers head coach Clive Gibson, referring to his team’s recent struggles.

Through the torrential rains that fell Friday night, it seemed like Concordia was going to drop their third straight game when Carabins right-winger Paul Côté Lépine made his way past the try line to go up 7-0 early in the first.

This seemed to be something of a trend for the Stingers, as they were dropping balls and missing field goals. This was something that didn’t sit well with Gibson.

“The ball-handling out in the back was abysmal. Some of it had to do with the weather, and some of it had to do with a lack of focus,” he said.

But the Stingers came out a whole new team in the second half; finding the try line seemed to come naturally to them.

“The forwards had their best game of the season so far,” said Stingers winger Frederic Kacou, who scored a try in the second half.

This was the case 12 minutes in when Caleb Jordan found an opening in the Carabins zone to tie the game at seven. Five minutes later it was Kacou lighting up the scoreboard with a try of his own. In the 29th minute, Vasken Redwanly added the insurance maker to go up 19-7.

The Stingers’ dominance in the second half had Carabins head coach Alexandre Saint-Bonnet praising them.

“Concordia is an excellent team, which means we had to deal with a huge opposition,” he said.

But despite the win, Gibson believes his team still has a lot of work to do to qualify for the postseason, a task complicated this year by the addition of the Carabins as the fifth team in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec.

“We needed a platform to work off of to get some ball. Now that it’s starting to work, we need to get the next phases out of it, get the connections going and keep the continuity.”

The Stingers will try to make it two in a row when they head to Lennoxville next Friday to take on the Bishop’s University Gaiters. Kickoff is at 8:15 p.m.