“Ugly, just ugly,” is how one Redmen fan aptly described McGill’s performance last Friday, when they played host to the Laval Rouge et Or in a rain-soaked match up at Molson Stadium.

Riding high off their first win in almost three years, the McGill Redmen (1-3) failed to deliver a successful follow-up against the No. 4 ranked Rouge et Or (4-0), who proceeded to shut out the Redmen 69-0 in front of a crowd of just over 600, that quickly thinned out after half-time.

The Redmen managed to hold the Rouge et Or to three points in the first quarter, despite playing the majority of it in their own half of the field. McGill’s inability to cut down on penalties and careless mistakes, along with injuries to two linebackers and key offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, provided the necessary spark in the second quarter for a potent Laval offence.

The Rouge et Or opened the scoring flood in the second quarter with a 20-yard rushing touchdown. On the following possession, Redmen quarterback Ryne Bondy threw the first of his two interceptions—resulting in a 35-yard touchdown by a Laval defensive end. Bondy was anything but the offensive catalyst he’d proved to be the previous week, managing to only complete 12 of 32 attempts for 143 passing yards.

However, McGill’s lacklustre performance was a result of poor play by the entire team. Penalties, dropped passes, and poor defensive play continued throughout the second quarter, leaving fans wondering if the team had any intensity. The coaching staff echoed the frustration of the spectators. Defensive coordinator Mickey Donavan and offensive coordinator Patrick Boies pulled their lines aside multiple times throughout the game in passionate attempts to get their players to wake up and focus.

Head Coach Clint Uttley was quick to explain that the lack of effort that plagued the entire team trickled down from the senior leaders, who appeared to be demoralized and uninspired in the face of Laval’s domination and injuries to important players on the squad.

“There was [a] point where [Laval] put in four touchdowns in eight minutes and then [we] just [gave] up,” Uttley explained. “It’s unfortunate too, because we have a lot of young talented kids, but we need our seniors to not quit when they are challenged. They need to step up.”

Heading into the second half, Laval had the Redmen at a 33-point deficit and, much like the skies above, Laval scores continued to rain down on McGill.

Taking full advantage of the Redmen’s even worse second half play, Laval capped off its scoring run at the beginning of the fourth quarter, when a Laval linebacker trucked through almost all of the Redmen’s gassed offence for a 47-yard interception return, finalizing the score at a whopping 69-0.

At the conclusion of the match, McGill had lost nine players to injury. Ironically, the game’s opening kick-off was done in honour of a hundred years of Sports Medicine and Kinesiology at McGill.

Clearly disappointed in his squad, Uttley dismissed the team for the weekend in an attempt to allow the players—specifically the seniors—to “get over it and move on.”

After what will surely be an intensive week of practice, the McGill Redmen look to redeem themselves as they travel to Lennoxville to take on the Bishop’s Gaiters on Sept. 29.