UMass Club Rugby @ BC from Daily Collegian on Vimeo.

The Massachusetts rugby team was chomping at the bit to finally face off against Boston College. But the game that was three weeks in the making was out of reach for the Minutemen, who fell to the Eagles, 30-15.

Late in the first half, after a successful try and conversion, UMass looked to be in position to turn the tie game in its favor before the half. But a Minutemen pitch was picked off and run back by the Eagles untouched for the score to take the lead permanently.

The miscue was one of many for UMass, which had not taken the field since its 66-17 win against Connecticut on Sept. 8. Referee miscues and mishandlings by the team forced a forfeit against the Eagles earlier this season on Sept. 25. while putting its Oct. 2 game against Northeastern in limbo.

In the first matchup against BC, the referee failed to arrive on time for the game, leaving UMass in a vulnerable position in which they were afforded two choices by the Eagles squad: Play a friendly or forfeit. By this time, a substitute referee had arrived but Minutemen coach Tony Neverson says that BC had no interest in playing an official game.

With his team already facing a number of injuries, Neverson waived the friendly and took the forfeit, playing his younger B-side and C-side players. The result left the coach and his players jaded from the match and looking forward to Saturday’s matchup with seething anticipation. Neverson himself was disappointed in BC’s choice to go for the forfeit rather than play two weeks ago.

“A team will do what is in their team’s best interest,” Neverson said. “To say that I would not have asked for the forfeit, it’s not keeping within the honor and the integrity of the game, where you want to decide it on the field.”

Neverson also said he’d never been as excited for a game so much in his 30-plus years of rugby experience. But what disappointed the UMass coach most was after the Minutemen asked to put out the B-side and C-side teams to give them experience, BC initially agreed but later decided to put out their starters against the younger UMass players.

The second meeting, though, was heavily marked by Minutemen miscues, evidence that they had not seen live game action since the season opener.

“Today, I think, was a case of us being idle for a couple of weeks, two games,” Neverson said. “Everyone else has had their full slate of games and we’ve been idle for two weeks, so I think we were a little bit rusty.”

Backs captain Edaun Pickholz agreed, saying that scrimmaging in practice is no substitute for live game action against a real opponent.

“It was the simple things that killed us,” Pickholz said. “We kind of beat ourselves. The thing about rugby is, because of how aggressive the game is by nature, if you take two weeks off from that, it’s hard to get back into the flow… You can work on fitness in practice, but there’s nothing like a game.”

After halftime, the Eagles gained the upper hand in terms of momentum, putting up two penalty tries to stretch the lead to 23-10.

UMass would strike again, however, as an Eagles penalty gave the Minutemen a free rush just meters away from the goal line. The first pitch, though, was fumbled back to BC in what appeared to be a costly mistake. But a quick UMass recovery set them up just beyond 20 yards out as good execution by the forwards resulted in a breakaway by flanker Connor Carroll, with a missed conversion bringing the Minutemen within eight points.

In the waning minutes, BC continued to work its way deliberately down the field, scoring with a final try and conversion to seal the win.

Following the A-side game, the UMass and BC B-side teams faced off, with the Minutemen pulling out a 23-15 victory.

There was a great amount of confusion following the first meeting between the teams as to why the referee had not shown up as expected. The problem, according to Neverson, turned out to have stemmed from an unpaid hotel bill from last season.

When the Minutemen were in Florida during the playoffs last year, a now-former member of the team was cited with a noise complaint in the team hotel, unbeknownst to Neverson or any other member of the rugby team.

The bill, which went without mention for months, was eventually sent to the UMass Athletic apartment, which, upon discovering the unpaid bill, froze the rugby team’s spending account. Because the account was frozen, the referee that Neverson thought was hired for the game was not, and so the problems began to surface.

According to Neverson, neither he nor the team was made aware of the bill or the account freeze until after the game.

Nick O’Malley can be reached at [email protected].