It was an emotional night on Wednesday Oct. 12 at Concordia field, as the first ever Drummond Cup was played between the Concordia Stingers and McGill Martlets.
The game was a tribute to former Stinger rugby player Kelly-Anne Drummond who died Oct. 4, 2004. Drummond played with the Stingers from 1999-2001 and before that played with John Abbott College in 1997 and 1998. Drummond, a graduate in Communications, was found with stab wounds in her back. Her boyfriend has been charged and is awaiting the start of his trial.
The Cup will be an annual event in a battle for rugby supremacy in Montreal between Concordia and McGill.
While most of the Stingers team did not play with Drummond, only two players on the team now played when she was in her last year, they made it a point to raise awareness and money. All money donated throughout the game was donated under Kelly-Anne’s name to the West Island Woman’s shelter. $1,052 was raised at the game.
“Most of the team didn’t know Kelly-Anne,” said men’s rugby coach and rugby team manager Clive Gibson, “but a lot of the emotion was because they were doing something concrete to remember her. This isn’t only about Kelly-Anne, it is a personal issue for women and I think some of the emotion comes from the principle of what they are trying to do.”
Gibson also added that the team was inspired to do something because of the appearance of Kelly-Anne’s parents, Doreen Haddad and John Drummond who handed out the trophy that bears their daughter’s name to the McGill captain.
Gibson says the score of 41-3 is positive for the team going into the playoffs because, “McGill is a extremely strong team. The girls should be very happy with their result because the score is not indicative of how well they played.”
The Stingers beat Sherbrooke 3-0 on Sunday to finish at .500 and fourth in the Quebec conference.
The women’s rugby team will play first-place McGill on Sunday in the first round of the playoffs at MacDonald campus.
The men’s rugby team lost a shocker to ETS last Tuesday, but the score was not important to the coaching staff.
“The game is nothing to worry about. We played our second and third string players for most of the game,” said Gibson. “It is a long shot that we will finish the season outside of third place unless we really perform badly for the remainder of the season so we wanted to see our depth and give our main players a rest.”
Gibson said that ETS did not improve very much between the first and second meeting, and the result was an indication of the difference of skill between the team’s starters and bench players.
When Gibson was asked how confident he felt for the playoffs after the team’s win against McGill, he seemed very confident. “We have the guns. The talent is there, it is just a matter of the right game plan and executing. There is a lot of potential here and if they believe in themselves, the sky is the limit.”
The men’s rugby team plays McGill on Wednesday Oct. 19 at 7 p.m.
