Brown managed to hold off Fairfield 24-11 Friday night in a tense game that was perhaps closer than the defending NCR D1 champions desired.
For Brown Head Coach David LaFlamme, this could have been a bit of a statement win, but it wasn’t.
“I’ll take the win but I would have liked to get a bonus point,” LaFlamme told GRR. “We have struggled this season to put together a solid performance.”
Brown has had to deal with injuries, player unavailabilities, and the like and the result has been a starting lineup that isn’t set, and it shows on the field.
“We’re still missing a couple of guys tonight, but that's always going to be par for the course,” said LaFlamme. “I think we think we can be the same team as last year but we're not. I feel we are similar but we can potentially be better... but we're not there yet.”
Brown opened the scoring less than three minutes into the game after an overthrown Fairfield lineout was nabbed by prop Asa Rosenmeier. The Brown forwards consolidated and then the ball went back toward the sideline and center Will Sinfield went over. Raphael Lansonneur made the difficult conversion for a 7-0 lead.
Fairfield had some territory after that but Brown defended fairly well and were able to continually get out of trouble. It wasn’t until about the 21st minute that Brown was really able to spend more time in Fairfield’s 22. Off a scrum move Brown saw No. 8 Antonio Esteves make some ground, offload to scrumhalf Dylan Lewis, who danced around before being tackled. Quickly flanker Henrique Gabriel picked up and carried some Fairfield tacklers with him to go over. Lansonneur’s line-drive kick was just high enough and Brown led 14-0.
Fairfield finally took some points after some pressure, and flyhalf Henry Novicki slotted the long-range kick to make it 14-3.
Moments later Fairfield had themselves back in the game when a big break from center Patrick McHale got the Stags inside the Brown 22, and after a few phases Novicki picked up from the base of the ruck to go in at the corner. Now it was 14-8 with halftime beckoning.
Fairfield fullback Pat Burke made a break and a kick and chase to put Brown under more pressure, and McHale’s pursuit and quickness over the ball produced a penalty and another chance for Novicki.
The flyhalf duly slotted the kick and it was 14-11.
