The Massachusetts men’s club rugby team lost its first regular-season game since October 2022 in a 33-15 defeat to an unbeaten Northeastern team. The Maddogs (3-0) broke down the Minutemen (2-1), not allowing their forwards to get the runs that UMass has excelled with over the past few years.
Northeastern won the game thanks to the outstanding play of its backs, who, when they found space on the outside, made the Minutemen pay. Maddog outside center Bobby Walker was responsible for 16 of his team’s points.
Walker scored the first try of the game when he flung off a UMass player who was draped on his shoulder, trying to bring him down, and built up speed to blow by the final few Minutemen backs. The Irish native also kicked three separate penalty kicks, totaling nine points. The final one put Northeastern up by three scores with 14 minutes remaining in the game, deflating UMass’ final hopes.
The Minutemen had glimpses where they had the momentum, but some costly penalties stopped them dead in their tracks. Seven knock-ons and 19 total penalties from UMass killed promising drives and gave the Maddogs more possession than the Minutemen could afford. Northeastern capitalized on the gap in discipline, scoring multiple times directly off penalties.
“It’s huge. As you can see, the entire flow of the game changes, right?” head coach Philip Ciccarelli said. “Every time you try to get a little momentum and we lose a ball, we get a turnover and it’s theirs again, you know? So we just, yeah, we just didn’t have it.”
UMass dominated its last two opponents in almost all aspects of the game, but against the Maddogs, the Minutemen stars couldn’t perform to the level that they have in the past. UMass couldn’t get momentum from its typical forward attacking group. As a result, Northeastern got more opportunities than any team in a regular-season game against the Minutemen for quite a while.
“We just didn’t have it today, it was just an off day,” Ciccarelli said. “I thought Northeastern played an outstanding game. They played really hard. Their forwards match up with our forwards really well. We didn’t have that go forward that we usually do when we put them on their back foot. And our back line got tested more than they’ve ever been in a home match. “
The key player in that forward group is graduate student Liam Concannon, who still managed to get himself involved in the very few UMass opportunities. In the second half, Concannon laid a big hit on a Maddog player trying to get the ball away from their own goal line, but Concannon hit him so hard that he forced a knock-on, giving the Minutemen the ball with a great opportunity to score. Back in play, they gave it to Concannon, who powered through a high tackle that earned a yellow card for Northeastern and put the ball down for the team’s second try of the game.
In the final five minutes of the first half, Jonah Ly found a gap in the Maddogs’ defense and ran about 20 yards before they took him down. Out of the ruck, Concannon broke two tackles to bring the ball within a few feet of the goal line before Kadin Phimister scored. However, outside of those two plays from Concannon, the star forward wasn’t able to do much else in the game, limiting UMass’ offense.
“When he gets running downhill, it’s really hard to stop, and that sets the entire flow of the offense,” Ciccarelli said. “When he’s getting stifled, it kind of pushes us back, and we don’t get that good go forward, and we didn’t have that today.”
The Minutemen play again next weekend away against Yale on Oct. 4. The Bulldogs are another undefeated team who are coming off a 61-0 demolition of Niagara.
Myles Donato can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @myles_donato.
