WATERLOO, Ont. - The Golden Hawks men's rugby team made history last season when they earned the program's first OUA silver medal and inaurgural qualification for the Canadian University Men's Rugby Championship. With the OUA schedule released, head coach Phil Murphy and his squad are already planning for even more success in 2023. 

"[We're] very excited to get started again and looking forward to hopefully repeating what we did last year." 

It's only fitting their first opponent will be the team who beat them in last year's OUA final; the eventual national bronze medalist Guelph Gryphons. That game took place in Guelph, but this year Laurier will open their season at home on September 9. The Golden Hawks will look to earn their first win against the Gryphons since 2009. 

Guelph, along with Western and Queen's, have formed a trio of juggernauts who've dominated the OUA for most of the past decade. After facing the defending champions, the Golden Hawks' next two games will be on the road against the Mustangs and Gaels on September 16 and 23, respectively. 

It's a tough task to be sure, but one Murphy feels his team is up for. "We'd have to play against them anyway, right? To have them the first three games of the season, it's a good litmus test for seeing how we've progressed from the end of last season," he said. 

"The difficulty is how I like to run my season. I don't want the guys to be peaking in week one, I want them peaking when it comes to [the playoffs]," he continued. "I'm going to be putting them through the wringer those first five weeks of preseason and the regular season. So, they know that that they're in for a very, very difficult five weeks with me getting them ready for the postseason." 

The purple and gold will return home to face the York Lions on September 30, just over twenty years since the last matchup between these two teams. Murphy says he'll lean on video shared by other OUA teams to make sure the team is prepared against an unfamiliar opponent. 

"We will have several games that we were able to look at their tendencies and be able to prepare for that. But our challenge is to get our game plan set, and then we can make minor alterations depending on who we're playing against. But it's up to us to put our game plan in place and make them stop us rather than trying to change the game plan week in, week out." 

After hosting the RMC Paladins on October 7, the Golden Hawks will make the short trip up University Avenue for a Battle of Waterloo to close out the regular season on October 13. 

"You can never count out Graham Stickler as a coach. He's very crafty," said Murphy about his Warriors counterpart. "And you know they will be emotionally hurting after the quarterfinal loss last year. It was a big game [a 71-21 Laurier win] and so they will remember that." 

Laurier will then have a bye week before the start of the playoffs. Depending on injuries, Murphy hopes to schedule an exhibition game to keep his players in rhythm. Consistency, he says, is extremely important to achieving their goal of bringing home an OUA championship. 

"If you want to be a good team, good teams play against great teams and then they play poorly against teams that aren't as good as you." 

"If you want to be a great team, then you need to play great all the time. It doesn't matter who you're playing against. You have to play to your standard."