Football demolishes Lions to go 4-0

Despite Homecoming’s cancellation, the event’s usual suspects were in attendance at Richardson Stadium for the Queen’s Gaels’ 67-0 romp over the woeful York Lions on Saturday.

Purple-dyed engineering students still rushed the field during half-time and alumni were still part of the 6,221-strong crowd.

Queen’s quarterback Danny Brannagan returned from an injury that kept him out of last week`s game against Ottawa, posting a career-high 543 passing-yards, connecting on 24 of 36 passes in three quarters of play before being replaced in the fourth by backup quarterback Justin Chapdelaine.

Brannagan said the injury didn’t affect his performance.

“It wasn’t really something that was weighing on my mind,” he said. “When you get out there you’re just running around, you can’t think about if you’re going to get hurt. When you start playing scared, that’s when injuries happen.”

The defence began Saturday’s game without one of their largest threats. Lineman Osie Ukwuoma was absent from the first two quarters, writing his LSAT exams.

Queen’s has kept its opponents out of the end zone the last three games.

Despite the impressive numbers, head coach Pat Sheahan said the defence has a lot of room for improvement.

“York actually moved the ball on us a little bit better than I thought, really, but in the end the guys made a play every time they needed to make one.”

Such a drastic victory makes it difficult to find weaknesses in the team, but Sheahan said he’ll find them.

“Obviously I think we over-manned them,” he said. “I still think there’s a level of excellence that we need to get to. We’ll probably have to really dissect this one to find a whole bunch to be upset about.”

Queen’s is now undefeated in 14 straight regular season games, tying the team record set more than 40 years ago. Sheahan said he’s more interested in the two upcoming road-trips south to Windsor and Waterloo.

“We’ve certainly got a positive season building but you know what, this a what-have-you-done-for-me lately kind of business,” he said. “A loss in either one of the next two weekends would be something that nobody’s planning on. The whole deal is to make sure we’re in the hunt and scrap Western for first-place.”

The Western Mustangs notched a narrow victory over the Guelph Gryphons this weekend to maintain a tie for first-place in the OUA with the Gaels. Both teams are undefeated in four outings.

Sheahan said he’s focusing on next weekend and his team’s gruelling commute to Windsor to face the Lancers this weekend.

“It’s an eight or nine-hour bus ride,” he said. “How your team responds to that physically is often sometimes hard to calculate. We’ve played some really lousy games down there.”

The Gaels have met misfortune at the hands of the Windsor Lancers. In 2006, Queen’s dropped a 22-18 decision during the Homecoming game at Richardson Stadium. They beat the Lancers by a convincing 38-3 in 2007, the last time the Gaels were in Windsor.

Queen’s will kick off in Windsor at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The game will be broadcast live on CFRC.