The Massachusetts men’s club rugby team have now lost back-to-back home games with a 51-24 loss to Boston College on senior night. UMass (3-2) slowed in the final parts of the game, and the Eagles (4-0) took advantage.
The Minutemen kept things close for much of the match, trailing by just five points with 15 minutes to play. The floodgates opened up from there with the Eagles scoring four unanswered tries to end the game.
“That was a great game for 60 minutes,” head coach Philip Ciccarelli said. “It was tight, it was tied, and then we just had an empty tank, or they had a little bit more than we thought, and they blew it open.”
Boston College certainly blew it open, and the key part of the late surge was Patrick McMahon, who scored back-to-back tries for his team separated by just five minutes. The speedy back twice took advantage of the extra numbers and space on the outside and blew by the tired UMass defenders to score untouched.
Just five minutes after McMahon’s second try, the Eagles received a lineout and called a trick play that was installed by the player, not the coaches, and it got Boston College captain Sean Murphy the ball while moving. The big senior almost pulled away, but as he was tackled, he laid the ball off for one of his teammates for an easy try.
“The last four tries they got were, I wouldn’t say garbage because they kept the foot on the gas, but we just kind of disappeared,” Ciccarelli said. “Couldn’t get anything going, and that was it. First 60 [minutes], brilliant. [We] had a great game. But it’s an 80-minute game.”
In the loss, the Minutemen returned a key player to their squad from injury. Last year’s starting scrum half, Oisin Allen, played in his first game since suffering a hand injury over the summer. His impact was immediate, commanding his team on both sides of the ball and helping to create some opportunities for UMass. Twice in the first half, Allen located Liam Concannon out of a lineout maul, who barged in the remaining five yards to put the ball down.
“[Allen’s] such a great presence on the field, and controls the defense,” Ciccarelli said. “He really controls the pace of play. He does a really good job of that, and his ball is so quick,, it was great having him back.”
Even with Allen’s return, the Minutemen are still missing several key contributors. Forwards captain Christian Manjikian has been sidelined all season, while Kadin Phimister, another major piece of the squad, went down two games ago.
“With [Manjikian] and [Phimister], we’ve got a couple injuries,” Ciccarelli said. “But you’ve got to go with what you have, and I thought we had had a good team to start, it just didn’t happen today.”
Achieving their second loss of the season this early on, UMass will be hard pressed to replicate the success they had in the 2024 season. After winning nine straight games last year and making a men’s Division I-AA semifinal appearance, the Minutemen’s success has not carried over strongly from season to season.
UMass’s final chance at a playoff berth comes in two weeks when they travel to play their fourth undefeated team of the season in Babson. The game will be played on Oct. 25 at Harrington Field.
Myles Donato can be reached at mcdonato@umass.edu and followed on X @myles_donato.
