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By Dinesh Weerawansa

Havelocks Sports Club and Isipatana Vidyalaya won the clubs and schools titles respectively with two good wins to emerge champions at the Premier Rugby Championships concluded at Longden Place, Colombo yesterday.

The Premier Rugby Championship, the brainchild of the Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports, Johnston Fernando, was a tremendous success on its second successive year. The tournament, organised under the patronage of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, gave a good chance for the cream of Sri Lanka's club and schools rugby players of all age groups to test their strength in a major tournament worked off concurrently.

Havelocks came from behind to make the defending champions CR & FC eat the humble pie before their own home supporters. The scores were deadlocked six-all at the breather but Havelcoks came from behind to take gradual control of the game. Even then, CR made a late come back with a hat trick of tries during the dying stages of the game but they ran out of time to fall two points short. If CR had converted their last injury time try, they would have made it 23-all but the lady luck was not with the red shirts.

It was so near and yet so far for the defending champions CR & FC. Havelcoks survived later pressure to register an exciting 23 points to 21 win over CR in the final, which dished out a grand treat of rugby for holiday crowed. Havelocks scored their points from two goals and two penalties while CR had three tries and two penalties.

All scoring done in the first half were through penalties - two each by Havelocks and CR. But the first 20 minutes of the second half completely changed the game, as Havies scored two goals to turn the match in their favour.

Another 25m penalty by Prasad Perera saw Havelocks extend their lead to 23-6. Then came those explosive three tries by CR, which almost took them near Havelocks. The last two CR tries came from Sri Lanka players Krishan Musafar and Zulfikar Halimdeen. But the latter missed a crucial conversion of his own try which would have taken the game into extra time.

In the Under-19 Inter-school final which was played before the club final, defending champions Isipatana produced some Champaign rugby to trounce Wesley by 24 points to nil. The winners collected their points from two goals and two tries while restricting their opponents to a blank score sheet.

Wesley had the heavier pack of the two but they failed to make use of the advantage they had with more weight on scrums. Isipatana never wasted the good ball whenever that came their way and ran down as many as four tries of which two were converted.

The green shirts opened their scoring early in the fifth minute of the game when flanker Lasitha Costa fell over for an unconverted try. It was an inspiration for the reigning champions and never looked back from this point. Isipatana forwards combined effectively with their back division and gradually took control of the game.

Seven minutes later, Isipatana scored their second of the four tries though a beautiful back division move. Centre Shanaka Fonseka crossed the Wesley line in the 12th minute of the game. Wesley made a few threatening moves to make their scoring before the short whistle but Isipatana defence stood firm. Isipatana led 12-0 at the breather.

Isipatana led a fresh attack in the second half and ran down two more tries after 'lemons'. Scrum half Prasad Manjula scored Iispatana's third try, which completely turned the game in favour of green shirts'. Isipatana put the icing on the cake of their excellent season when winger Nalin Liyanage touched down completely unchallenged.

Iispatana set their three in motion and the ball changed hands when defence came from Wesley to send Liyanage to touch down. Wesley could not make use of their superior set of forwards as they did not have a proper game plan. Their backs wasted even the rare good ball enjoyed by their forwards. On the other hand, Isipatana had a wonderful game with a smooth halves combination.

It was a memorable day for Isipatana which won their 42nd inter-school under-19 rugby title in their 40-year-old proud rugby history at Havelock Park school. Having taken to rugby in 1963, Isipatana has so far won 64 trophies in all age groups, an exemplary feat which is hard to match.

Isipatana not only won the Under-19 schools title but also won two other junior rugby finals to complete a triple yesterday. Isipatana beat Carey by 13 points to nil in the Under-13 final and also beat S.Thomas' by 17 points to 5 in the Under-15 final played last evening.

Wesley, the Under-19 runners up, had some consolation at the end of the day as they won Under-17 title beating Thustan by 22 points 13 in the final. Minister Johnston Fernando was the chief guest with former CH President and Managing Director of Butani Exports, Kishin Butani as the chief guest. There were lavish cash prizes on offer for the outstanding teams running up to over a million of rupees.

The champion Havelocks SC received Rs. 200,000/-, apart from Rs. 100,000/- they won as bonus for winning final round matches up to semis.

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