By Allyson Kenny, Sports Contributor
A disappointing start to the King’s varsity rugby season took a bizarre turn on the Sept. 10, when the on-field efforts of the Blue Devils were overshadowed by a water gun-toting Mount Allison fan.
The women’s side, leading for the majority of their game, eventually fell to Mount Allison 15-13. The men’s side took a 32-0 beating.
A driving rain fell during the first match, but had subsided by the time the men’s game finished. No wonder, then, that Neil Hooper, King’s athletic director, initially thought the water was coming from the trees overhead.
“Then I saw a guy behind the fence with a super soaker. He literally soaked me to the skin. I think he may have reloaded, and then he hit the players. But the water on the team was minimal. The kid looked at us, said ‘And I’ll be back,’ and left.”
“Any incident like that is unfortunate,” says Pierre Arsenault, Mount Allison’s athletic director.
“It’s not the intention of our program to have visiting teams come to Mount Allison and have experiences like that. It’s certainly not representative of our program.”
Hooper gives tremendous credit to the team for their handling of the incident. Relocating to the goal on the far side of the field, coaches quickly diffused the situation.
Hooper was the last one from King’s to leave the field. Too drenched to comfortably make the drive from Sackville, New Brunswick to Halifax that night, he opted to stay at a hotel in Amherst.
Mount Allison and King’s have an intense rivalry in rugby. The men have met each other in the finals for the past three years, with two of those games decided in overtime. Mount Allison have won all three championships.
“It could have been worse. I could have been hit with bricks, not water,” Hooper says.
“Mount Allison is a fantastic school, and they have a fantastic athletic department. And fans are fans. It’s in their nature to enthusiastically support the home team. But the safety of everyone involved has to be the number one priority.”
King’s staff and players have been subject to abuse at games in the past, including verbal harassment and objects being thrown at their bench. The trend is frustrating for Hooper.
“They could call us bad players, or a bad team. If they want to say King’s sucks, that’s fine. But making reference to a player’s size, or personal aspects, we’re fed up with having to deal with that. May the best team win, but regardless of who wins, you shouldn’t have to deal with the impact of things that could change the outcome of a game. In basketball, if fans are interfering with the game, the referee can actually stop the match. There’s a zero-tolerance policy.”
Mount Allison celebrated homecoming on the night of the rugby matches, so alcohol likely played a part in fuelling the violence directed towards Hooper and the King’s team. Hooper indicated that the Mount Allison fan in question is known to both officials at that school and at King’s.
“The notion of someone being able to come over there [near the King’s players] and do that is disturbing. It forces me to come back here and rethink what we do [at King’s and in the ACAA] in terms of security.”
The super soaker incident could have consequences well beyond the scope of Friday’s games. The Atlantic College’s Athletic Association (ACAA) will discuss the incident at their monthly meeting on Sept. 22. Likely changes include a mandate that there be a security presence at all further games, derogatory signs be banned or confiscated on site, and fans engaging in verbal abuse—regardless of which side they support—be ejected from the match.
Security guards at games seem to be a wise investment, but can schools afford it? Hooper hopes so.
“The experience you give, your public image, what price can you really put on that?”
King’s next meets Mount Allison at home on Oct. 24 for their last regularly scheduled matches of the season. The outcome of those games will likely determine home field advantage in the finals. Provided the ACAA levels a safety mandate on Wednesday, security will be present for that match.
Neil Hooper doesn’t foresee any trouble at home, and a large contingent of King’s fans are expected to attend. He believes King’s fans are some of the most respectful in the league.
Despite being shaken by the incident, he isn’t sweating the small stuff leading up to Sept. 22.
“In the meantime,” he says, “We’ve just ordered a few raincoats.”
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