McGill 70, ETS 7
After a couple of unconvincing wins against ETS last year, the McGill Rugby season opener was a veritable lambasting. This fresh new squad of Redmen took to the sunny field in Ste. Julie and managed to maintain a staggering intensity from whistle to whistle. In the words of Coach Sean McCaffrey: "It was a close game...and then they caught the opening kickoff."
The Ecole de Technologie was anything but Supérieure against the relentless barrage of scoring lead by Bryce Thomassin (3 tries). Matt DeGraff galloped in for an effortless try early on and added insult to injury with 3 first half conversions. Caleb Balloch (2 tries) and Jake Heller (1 try) took it upon themselves to score some points for this year's solid forward pack. But inevitably, much of the limelight was on the wing, where our winger combination of "Yellow Card" Nick Cadrin and "Hot and New" Kyle Buckley managed to reconcile their age and language differences and pile on another 4 scores throughout the match.
Other moments of brilliance and irony included Caleb's failed hattrick - after a graceful seventy yard jaunt he somehow managed to knock on the ball in the tryzone, meriting the first Walk of Shame of the season. Replacement flyhalf Adrian Thorogood came on in the second half, giving Matt de Graff a break but not ETS. He proceeded to waltz through the ETS backline and flick a miracle one-handed pass to the legendary Frank Hewitt who completed the masterpiece with yet another try for the Redmen. Thorogood then missed his convert but managed to peg off one of the ETS players instead. The ref called the game not a minute too late i.e. 8 minutes early.
All in all, a brilliant start to the season for our beloved Redmen and a hint of what's to come.