If preseason is meant to ease teams back into gruelling schedules, Queen’s Men’s Rugby clearly missed the memo—choosing the reigning National Champions as their so-called warmup opponent.
Last Saturday, the Gaels traveled to Montreal to face the ETS Piranhas—the same team that defeated them in last year’s national championship. The exhibition game was played in heavy rain on a muddy grass pitch—conditions that gave the matchup an extra layer of difficulty.
“Every collision was like a slide after,” Head Coach of Men’s Rugby, John Lavery said in an interview with The Journal. “Most of our guys aren’t used to that anymore. I thought they responded super well,” referring to the team’s adjustment from Nixon Field’s artificial turf to the muddy grass in Montreal.
Adding to the difficulty, ETS fielded an older and more experienced lineup, with most players coming from France and many already at the graduate level. For Lavery, that challenge made the matchup especially valuable preparation.
“It afforded us the opportunity to put them under real pressure and see how they go,” he said. “They play a nice brand of rugby, super physical, super skillful. For a lot of our guys, that’s the learning curve.”
Before heading to Montreal, Queen’s tested its depth in a pair of games against Ottawa. The developmental group of mostly first- and second-years rolled past Ottawa’s youth team, while a “bubble” group held their own against Ottawa’s top side—early signs that the Gaels had the depth needed to take on a powerhouse like ETS, giving the coaching staff plenty to think about.
“Rugby isn’t really a sport where you can recruit a champion team—we’re late specialization,” Lavery said. “The collisions decide the game, and a 17-year-old against a 23-year-old is not the same level of physicality, and we’ve to grow our own. Our young guys are fit, fast, strong, and they showed it.”
For Lavery, that developmental process is about more than just skill and fitness. He stressed that leadership and culture remain central to how the program approaches growth.
“The values of the game are what make it special,” he said. “We work really hard at that. The talent is great, but the assumption that kids actually understand how to be an adult is not realistic. We do a lot of work empowering the senior leadership to be a positive influence. It is part of their job.”
Despite the loss to ETS, Lavery called the experience encouraging. He said facing elite competition, even in exhibition play, gives his team a better sense of what is required to return to the national stage.
“If you lose a game and you let that ruin the game for you, then all that happened is you had a bad day,” he said. “If you can’t lose and learn or love the game even when it doesn’t give you what you wanted, that is selfish. That isn’t what rugby is about.”
The Gaels will open their OUA season this weekend against the University of Waterloo at Nixon Field at 4:30 pm on Saturday, Sept 6.
Tags
ETS Piranhas, John Lavery, Men's rugby
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