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| Monday, 21 July 2003 |
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Kingswood makes a great comeback Kandy Sports Corr. Unbeaten Kingswood College with eight successive victories during the current rugby season have emerged champions of the Group 'B' of the Schools Milo Championship. They achieved this by trouncing the hitherto unbeaten Ananda College by a convincing margin of 32-8 at the Randles Hill grounds, Kandy last Wednesday before a large crowd. Kingswood was the first school to play rugby in 1893 - a game which was then confined among the expatriate planters. The Colombo-based businessmen of European origin and those in the services. when the late L. E. Blaze introduced this sport to Kingswood many eye brows were raised but the game caught up both among the staff and the students and few years later the first match was played against Trinity College and both sides included members of the staff to add muscle and strength to the encounter. The Kingswoodians had to say good bye to this game a few years later following the death of a schoolboy ruggerite on the field. Those were the days that it was brawn and brawn and there was hardly any safety measures like the present times. The game has undergone tremendous changes and a lot of safety precautions is being taken for the safety of the players with the referees and the touch guides given wide powers to deal with dangerous play. Kingswood's rugby, after a 110-year wait got its first rugby ground this year thanks to excellent efforts made by the present Principal Ranjith Chandrasekera who is also the President of the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association and the ruggerites on their part paid him a tribute by winning the Group 'B' Championship in style. Led by centre three-quarter Dinesh Siriwimala, Kingswoodians baptised their new rugby grounds with a stunning 17-5 win over Wesley in the first leg of the L. E. Blaze Shield followed up with wins in tournament matches against St. Sylvesters 17-10, Thurstan 15-13, St. Joseph's 29-7, Zahira 65-3, Vidyartha 42-6, and Ananda 32-8. Thus aggregating 205 points in tournament matches alone. They also beat Dharmaraja college in a friendly match 14-3 for the William Weerasinghe Trophy. This was a remarkable performance by Kingswoodians after they had to call it quits mid way last season which saw them being relegated to Group 'B' but discipline was of prime importance to the school and they had to make this sacrifice. There were some unfortunate incidents and the Kingswoodians could not honour some of the fixtures towards the tail end of the season and they had to play in Group 'B' this season. there is no two words about Kingswood's performance this season and they met two schools from Group 'A' Wesley and Dharmaraja and scored convincing win over them. The team is being coached by old Kigswoodian and former CR & FC and Police centre Ronnie Ibrahim who was their junior coach last year. But fitness has been the forte of Kingswoodians and they are so strong and robust that their pattern of play resembles a seven-a-side approach where they go for the 'kill' from the kick-off. Handling the fitness of the side is triple international D. U. Mohottilal Jayatillake - a household name in the 'iron sport'. Jayatillake who is the Director of Physical Education at the University of Peradeniya has represented the country in body building, weight lifting, power lifting and strength building whilst being the holder of a number of national records in many sports. Jayatillake introduced new methods to achieve optimum fitness and in addition to rigorous physical exercises he also introduced weight training to build power and also swimming to tune up the muscles. This ensured very little injuries to the side as the ruggerites were also taught the art of breaking the fall and spreading the area of pain for wick recoveries. Kingswood's team this year comprised Dinesh Siriwimala (captain), Vinod Bandara (vice captain), Widuranga Nathawitharane, Dhatshana Premaratne, Tharinda Ratnayage, Achala Perera, Chinthaka Ekanayake, Maduka Tennakoon, Fazil Marija, Eranda Weerakoddy, Kasun Kaluarachchi, Mohammed Lufthi, Mohammed Jabbar, Mohammed Akram, Heshan Premaratne, Gemunu Kirinda, Kaushalya Abeygunaratne, Mohammed Rizvi, Anuradha Gunasekera, Pradeep Weerasekera, Mohammed Lathiff, Manoj Siriwardena Lakmal Divaratne, Navin Wijetunga and Radzi Buckman. |
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