Photos by Michael Geary. For the full set on flickr, click here
On Friday night, McGill’s Fill the Stadium event resulted with Concordia defeating the Redmen football team 34-29. Did we lose the game? Yes. Did anybody care? Hard to tell. The stadium was not full. The game was not won. The beer was not cheap. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Redmen football! Though we did not end up leaving “those dirty bumble bees with their stingers between their legs” as the Facebook event promised, there were many important moments during last Friday’s Shaughnessy Cup rivalry game between McGill and Concordia. As far as the actual game goes, a variety of records were broken this past weekend. Nineteen seconds in, first year defensive back Jeff Thompson ran for 102 yards, scoring the first touchdown of the night. In the process, Thompson made the Concordia Stingers look worse than my high school’s football team while also setting a victorious tone for the game, which unfortunately did not last past the third quarter. This impressive return was the longest in McGill history. Additionally, by the end of the game, place-kicker Austin Anderson had racked up a record-tying six field goals.
In more exciting news, a new record was broken in the number of on-field shenanigans with two separate streaking incidents. The first incident occurred during halftime, as a random McGill student stormed the field – apparently bored with simply sitting and cheering in the stands and instead hoping to show his enthusiasm in a more grandiose gesture. There does not seem to have been any political motivations behind his exhibitionism, although it is indeed possible that he viewed Molson Stadium as a safe space for semi-naked track practice. The speed shown by numerous chubby security guards in tackling the anonymous hero featured skills that our football team could perhaps learn from. The second exhibitionist, on the other hand, failed. In a lackadaisical, drunken stupor, the streaker got about ten yards before being taken out by security. Thankfully, neither fan had the balls to bare it all.
The student section’s enthusiasm was undeniable, however, and though the constant repetition of cheers got slightly old after a while, I didn’t hear any in favor of our spiritless neighbors. In the end, it was a game not of touchdowns, but of field goals. Not of win streaks, but of streakers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The game served its purpose – not only was it a successful pre-drink, but it was also a satisfactory precursor to the night that followed. We may not have won the game, but we sure as hell didn’t look as bored as Concordia.