Match Report vs. Brown University
Saturday, September 6, 2025
Fairfield 3 – Brown 24
After 2 weeks of high intensity and high volume in the preseason, we opened with the defending national champions. In a lot of ways, our schedule works perfectly; we play arguably the toughest opponent in our conference, we get a week off to recalibrate, and then we get right into the meat of our season! Most of all, it's Brown's first game just as much as its ours!
Despite not clearing our lines right off the kickoff receive, we won a penalty and then exited. After a brief territory battle, we won an attacking scrum on Brown's 10m line, went wide, broke into Brown's 22m area, worked the ball back to the other edge, but couldn't capitalize on the space. This was pretty much the theme of the day for us: Brown puts us under pressure, we hold our own, we have our chances, but don't convert. At the same time, the few mistakes we did make were punished Brown with tries. We should expect nothing less from a team of their caliber. We showed OUR caliber and class by staying in the fight for 80 minutes. In some cases, this performance was arguably our best effort against Brown since they joined the conference in 2022. While we (specifically
Henry Novicki '26) scored 11 points against them at Rafferty on a Friday night in 2023, our set piece was the most competitive against them this year. In fact, we even won a few scrum penalties against
them!
In Goff Rugby Report, Brown's coach Dave Laflamme says of our performance: "credit to Fairfield for giving us a good contest, their program continues to develop as one of our strongest opponents in the Liberty Conference, and their lively supporters always make things tough on the away team." In short, I believe we have earned Brown's respect. Next time, we need to earn the win!
Our man of the match was
Archer Fenton '29 at fullback. He kept us in the game with his coverage in the backfield, his counterattacking, his kicks and chase, and his aggression on his carries. A close second for consideration was the birthday boy
Tadhg O'Neill '29 at fly-half. Tadhg scored our only points on the day with his goal kick. He also executed the game plan with his kicking and directing.
We go into the bye week with massive intent to reflect, recalibrate, and respond against Syracuse on the 20th!
