The Rouge et Or won its 12e Vanier Cup Saturday at Richardson Memorial Stadium in Kingston. The Laval University football club defeated the Wilfrid-Laurier University Golden Hawks 22 to 17.
More details to come
Review of the 2024 Rouge et Or football season
This fall, in the regular season, the Rouge et Or football team had an almost perfect performance. Out of the 8 games on the schedule, head coach Glen Constantin's squad only suffered one loss. This happened on October 12 on the field of their great rivals, the Carabins of the University of Montreal. Hard-fought, the match ended in overtime with a 32-31 victory in favor of Montreal.
The Rouge et Or season got off to a flying start on September 7 against the same Carabins, with a 23-22 victory at the last minute at the Telus-UL Stadium in front of a record crowd of 20,903 spectators. With 18 seconds left in the game, while the Rouge et Or trailed 22-20, kicker Felipe Forteza gave his team the lead with a record 53-yard field goal.
On October 26 in Sherbrooke, the Rouge et Or won a decisive 28-0 victory against the Vert et Or. With this last match of the regular season, the Laval University team won the Quebec championship for the 18e times in its history.
During the season, the duo composed of receiver Olivier Cool and quarterback Arnaud Desjardins performed extremely well. With his 10 passing touchdowns, Cool finished the regular season tied for first in Canada. As for Desjardins, 17 of his passes resulted in as many touchdowns. His pass completion percentage of 75.9% allowed him to finish first in this area in the country. The Rouge et Or defensive brigade, for its part, allowed only 106 points in 8 games, the best performance among the 27 Canadian university teams.
The overall performance of the Laval University team is all the more commendable as the team was not the favorite team to win the Quebec championship. On the one hand, the Rouge et Or had lost many important players who had completed their university career, both in the offensive brigade and in the defensive brigade. On the other hand, the Université de Montréal Carabins, who won the Vanier Cup in 2023, fielded a lineup very similar to that of the previous year.
Before reaching the Canadian university final of the Vanier Cup, the Rouge et Or won the Quebec semi-final by a score of 41-18 against the Concordia Stingers. He then beat the Carabins 22-17 in the Quebec final of the Dunsmore Cup. This was followed by a 17-14 victory over the Regina Rams in the Canadian semi-final for the Mitchell Cup.
With the collaboration of Yvon Larose
