Women’s rugby endure first loss of the season

The women’s rugby team suffered their first loss of the season on Saturday, dropping a 39-6 decision against the McMaster Marauders at Kingston Field. The loss bumped the Gaels down to second place in the Russell Division, with a record of 2-1.

Fly-half Peggy-Rae Carswell and centre Emily Stern each scored a penalty for Queen’s, who were held without a try. Six different Marauders put down tries.

Stern said she was disappointed with the result, especially after the preparation that went into the game.

“I feel like we didn’t play up to our potential,” she said. “We practiced really hard and it kind of fell apart on Saturday.”

The score didn’t reflect the way Queen’s matched up against the visitors, Stern said.

“[McMaster] does have a really good team with a lot of solid players, but I wouldn’t say that they’re that much better than us,” she said. “We’re definitely competitive against them and that was not shown on Saturday.”

Unable to get their offence going, the Gaels seemed disjointed on the field.

“I felt like we weren’t very cohesive,” Stern said. “We did do some good things but overall we weren’t rucking hard enough, we were kicking the ball away instead of passing it and we weren’t seeing the space and reacting to their defense properly.”

Stern said the Gaels have to improve several aspects of their game.

“[On defence], we were tackling high and we really had to get low and hit their legs to stop them right away as they were running through our tackles,” she said. “Our offence was not very strong. In the back line we weren’t attacking from depth and we weren’t recognizing where the space was.”

McMaster and Queen’s entered the game ranked eighth and ninth in the CIS respectively, but Stern said the Gaels weren’t intimidated.

“I think the coaches want us to play every team, no matter what level, the same way,” she said. “When we came in against McMaster, we knew it was going to be a tough game but we didn’t change our preparation. We wanted to be equally prepared for every game that we play.”

Queen’s will travel to Toronto next weekend to take on the winless University of Toronto Varsity Blues.

“It’s really important that we don’t take them lightly because they have been getting better,” Stern said. “We beat them last year but we didn’t play very well and it ended being a closer game. This weekend we really need to go into it strong and try to get everything to work together and rack up the points.”

Queen’s will travel to the University of Toronto on Saturday to take on the Varsity Blues. Kickoff at 1 p.m.