Football holds up under pressure

Gaels defeat Varsity Blues, improve to 4-0

Gaels’ running back Mike Giffin tries to juke past Toronto defensive back Derek Batchelor Saturday. Queen’s won 58-14.
Image supplied by: Supplied Photo By Jeff Chan
Gaels’ running back Mike Giffin tries to juke past Toronto defensive back Derek Batchelor Saturday. Queen’s won 58-14.

Going into Saturday’s game against the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, the football team had little to gain and everything to lose.

The Varsity Blues came into the game with an unexpected 2-1 record, but were still trailing a 49-game losing streak behind them. Number-four ranked Queen’s was expected to annihilate the Blues, and the Gaels lived up to the weight of expectations, recording a 58-14 victory and improving their record to 4-0.

Defensive end Neil Puffer said the high expectations were tough to deal with.

“There was a fair bit of pressure on us,” he said. “Everyone expected us to win, everyone expected us to be perfect.”

He said the team still didn’t play their best, despite the lopsided score.

“We`re not terribly excited about our game today because it didn`t meet our standards for this sort of game,” he said. “We had a couple fumbles, and the trick plays that they were running on us, they got a lot of mileage from. We need to have our heads wrapped around those and know when they’re coming.”

The Gaels got off to a slow start, and it looked like Toronto would take the lead early on with a trick play. Quarterback David Hamilton handed off to fullback Mark Stinson, who faked a run to draw in the Gaels’ defence and then launched a long pass to a wide-open Drew Meerveld who took it in for a touchdown. The play was called back on a holding penalty though, and the Gaels responded to the early scare with two touchdowns of their own.

The Blues responded with a touchdown to make it 14-7 at the end of the first quarter, but Queen’s piled up 23 more points before the half and began to run away with the game.

Defensive back Jimmy Allin said Toronto was a much tougher opponent this year than when the Gaels had faced them previously.

“U of T’s obviously a much-improved team,” he said. “They’ve got some great athletes.”

Allin said Queen’s still has a long way to go before they meet their own standards of play, though.

“We need to work on everything,” he said. “We need to get better.”

Head coach Pat Sheahan agreed there’s still a lot of work to do.

“I’m pleased with the win, but I think that we’re still not a hundred per cent polished,” he said. “We still have a few areas that we can improve on, and my hope is with each passing week, we’re going to gain a measure of consistency and improve our execution. … Maybe I’m becoming too hard to please, I don’t know. It was a good win, and we want to be better, that’s all.”

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