Men’s rugby saw their 19-game winning streak snapped on Sunday against the McMaster Marauders.

The Gaels (3-1) fell 18-13 to McMaster (5-0) on the road, ending a two-year unbeaten run that kicked off with a 45-0 victory over the Waterloo Warriors on Sept. 29, 2012.

Second-year fly-half Michael Douros said McMaster’s ability to dictate their game plan pushed them past Queen’s.

“They held their own and kind of really gave us some fits,” he said. “I thought we also came out with a game plan and didn’t execute as well as we’d like. Pretty much all credit to them.”

He added that positives could be taken from the loss, as it can push the team towards their goal of an OUA title.

Queen’s opened the scoring in the match, when forward James Dent recorded a try early in the first half. Full back David Worsley was successful on the ensuing conversion to hand the Gaels a 7-0 lead.

The Marauders stormed back to tie the game, before a penalty kick by Worsley put Queen’s back in front by three. McMaster retook the lead later in the half, notching a try to hold a 12-10 lead heading into the break.

In the second half, Worsley added his second penalty kick to give the Gaels a temporary advantage. The Marauders rallied back for the win on the strength of a pair of penalty kicks from Jamie Leveridge.

With only a month left in their season, Douros said the Gaels will look to improve on a few aspects of their game in practice.

“We’ve got to start focusing all of our attention on going to practice and executing what we got to do for the two hours a day we have,” he said. “Just start coming together as a team. We’ve got a lot of good individual players, but we’re just not clicking as a team. I think we’ve just got to start coming together and be more of a team.”

Douros said that while Queen’s win streak came to an end, the loss to McMaster isn’t going to hang with the team.

“Every team’s got to lose at some point. At least Mac is a pretty recognizable program,” he said. “They’ve been good for the last decade or so. It’s nice to lose at least to a team of their stature. Obviously, people are disappointed but a streak has to come to an end sooner or later.”

The Gaels are in action this weekend when they host the undefeated Guelph Gryphons on Saturday. Last season, Queen’s beat the Gryphons 22-3 in Guelph.

“We’ve just got to look forward and start a new winning streak,” Douros said.