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The tapestry of St. Peter's vs Trinity rugby encounters

RUGBY: The ultimate, burning desire of every boy who dons his school's rugby jersey is to a part of the team to beat Trinity because for long the Kandy school has been considered the cradle of Rugby and it was they, together with Kingswood, who introduced the game to the school's calendar.

St. Peter's achieved 'the impossible dream' in only their third contest in 1935 under the captaincy of Fred Keller against a star-studded Trinity team led by Rex Breckenridge and having within the ranks such formidable exponents as O. L. Izadeen, Sammy David, E. Dodanwela, Hubert Ratwatte, William Molagoda and Stanley Maralanda.

That improbable victory with Archibald Perera, Claire Roeloeffsz, Stanley Livera, Henry Young and George Kellar lending support to skipper Fred Kellar was never a flash in the pan because they repeated the drubbing to read, in all, for five years on the trot, a success story never equalled by any other school until recently. SPC lost in '40 but came back strongly in 1941 under the captaincy of W. A. Chandrasena to beat Trinity again, captained for the second year by S. B. Dissanayake.

The earlier Trinity teams also that St. Peter's beat were veritable power houses comprising V. K. Vellayan, Duncan Reith, Denham de Alwis, Willie Jenkins, H. W. Fernando, Bobby Reith, E. R. Jenkins, N. Sammugam. Percy Madugalle, T. B. Marambe, Douglas Aluvihare, Michael Kogwa and Eggie Tucker.

The Peterites who dazzled and wove magic on the rugby fields have stood shoulder to shoulder with their Trinity counterparts and it truly has been a 'Roland for an Oliver' for who can speak in favour of Jeyer and Rajah Rodriguesz vs Robert Sourjah and Jinna Dias Desinghe; Travis de Jong vs Mike de Alwis; Desmond Haridge and Royden de Silva whom the incomparable Bala Thambiah once pointed out to me and said, 'That fellow is a gentleman' vs Lucky Vitarane and Eric Roles; Jeoff de Jong and Angleo Wickramaratne vs Franklin Jacob and Mark Sunderalingam; Sanjeeva Abeygoonawardena vs Tyrrel Rajapakse; Claire Roeloeffsz vs S. B. Pilapitiya; Ago Paiva vs Nimal Maralanda; Percy Perera and Rodney Patternot vs Dharmasiri Madugalle and Ken de Joodt; Henry Young vs Malcom Wright? Philip Buultjens, alone, stands in solitary splendor as the finest center-three-quarter ever to grace the country's rugger fields and even though he scored only three tries in a long and distinguished career, he made countless openings for others to score.

It is moot to mention that whereas it took only the third outing for SPC to beat TCK, Royal took 17 years, Zahira 8, STC 6; other schools do not come into the equation.

After 1941 the series re-commenced only in 1948 mainly due to World War II and though there has been a drought in terms of SPC wins virtually every encounter has been fiercely competitive and the margin of win/loss has been as thin as a cat's whisker and on some occasions such as in 1985 St. Peter's abandoned the boredom of a series of draws to notch a pulsating win by 8-0 under the captaincy of Rajith Abeygoonwardena with the Trinity captain being Manoj Jayatissa.

SPC repeated the win 6-5, nine years later in 1994 with their first win in the den of the Lions, Bogambara and that was after 53 years, this time captained by Roshara Alles against TCK's Mohmaed Rally.

Since then SPC has held the whip hand with more wins than draws and the manner in which they won against St. Anthony's in the curtain raiser augurs well for a splendid season in this momentous year.

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