By Henry Whitfield, Staff Contributor
The Dalhousie Tigers Football team were taught a tough lesson Saturday evening. Outgunned and outplayed by the UNB Saint John Seawolves, the Tigers lost 49–7 in front of a small crowd that braved the cold fall weather.
Much bigger defensive and offensive lines for the Seawolves outmanned, outsized and physically manhandled their opposition throughout the game, penning the Tigers inside their own half for much of the evening.
“This is just going to be a blip on the radar,” said Tigers head coach Mike Tanner. “I’m going to be here for the next four or five years and you’ve got to start a culture and get the program off the ground. Hopefully next year we get some bigger guys come.”
The visitors managed to steal themselves a 3 – 0 lead going into the second, after a single point and a Tigers safety put them ahead.
In the second, the Seawolves were given the ball with great field position, picking up a two-yard touchdown by Justin Cavan, before adding a ten-yard run by fullback Charlie Harroun.
Down by seventeen, the Tigers tried to respond and their defence stepped up forcing a fumble from receiver Joel Seale, but the offense recovered. The Sea Wolves looked to the air and quarterback Jeremy Mcauley looked deep and found Cavan in the end zone, but the Tigers were given a reprieve when the play was called back due to an offside penalty.
Still unable to get anything going, the offence conceded their second safety of the game and adding more concern was an injury to stand out player Darko Stasevic, who was helped off the field after a big collision with Lee Maloney, who one player on the sideline referred to as a “behemoth that doesn’t stop running at you.”
With two minutes remaining in the first half, the Seawolves charged up the field, their offence having no issues moving the chains and as time expired, Jeremy Mcauley found receiver Nick Noel wide open in the end zone.
Already with a 26–0 lead at halftime, the Seawolves picked up where they left off forcing another safety from the Tigers offence before taking over and finding Cavan in the end zone, but missing their conversion. Not done there, running back Isaiha Nice broke out for a 50-yard run and Evan Mcauley picked up the touchdown to put the score at 41–0.
One bright spot for the Tigers was play of Josh Senmen, who ran the ball three times in the last quarter picking up 44 yards, which sparked the offence and got the chains moving. Brendan Festeryga found Kyle Golding for a 20 yard pass, before an eight-yard throw to Cody Hollohan put the team in the red zone for the first time all night.
Taking advantage of their field position, Festeryga turned a broken play into their first touchdown of the game, scrambling away from three oncoming defenders to find Andrew Adamczyck in the end zone. The Tigers gave up a touchdown kick-return to Tim Jackson and gave up one more single, ending an embarrassing evening that left them looking up at a scoreboard reading 49–7.
Despite the heavy loss, Chris Hall stood out for the defence, picking up a number of key tackles and a sack in the game, Head Coach Mike Tanner picked out Hall’s play as a highlight on the night, “Chris has done very well for us, you can see the improvement from game to game, he hadn’t played any football before and that’s the beauty of doing this, we’re going to have some surprises, some disappointments, and the coaching staff is in it for the long haul.”
“The problem with us is sometimes we’re slow and we’re already small. It’s okay to be small and fast, but our biggest problem now is our offensive and defensive line size. We don’t have many big bodies and that’s what we need.”
“You look at their guys and they’ve got kids at 260, 270, 280 and we’d have to put two of our offensive linemen together to get that size.”
With homecoming this weekend, Tanner is looking forward to seeing how his team responds to the heavy loss.
“I want to see what type of personality this team has after being [beaten] this badly this week. Are we going to roll over and die or do our chinstrap up a little bit tighter and come out a lot harder?”
The team plays tomorrow night at 6 p.m. after the soccer on Wickwire field against the powerful Moncton Bluebombers.
Disclosure: Gazette editor-in-chief Joel Tichinoff plays occasional minutes for the Tigers football team after decided on a whim to try out. He helps us out with spellings sometimes, but he doesn’t content edit any football articles.
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