Royal beat Wesley

Dudley Shield Hockey:

HOCKEY: Royal beat Wesley 9 goals to 0 in their inaugural Dudley de Silva Trophy Hockey match played at the Astro turf. The strong Royal side emerged as the all island champions last year and the bronze medallist this year proved strong for a very young and inexperienced Wesley side.

Wesley managed to keep the first half score to 4-0 mainly due to some excellent work by John Sudarshan who brought off some brilliant saves between the posts.

Royal opened scoring in the third minute of the game through their skipper and Left Inside Ashane Peiris. In the 10 minute of the game Royal scored their second goal when full back Aloka Amarasiri converted a penalty corner.

In the 15 minute of the first half Marlon Senanayake converted another penalty corner for Royal to lead 3-0. The fourth goal also came off a penalty corner when Asane Peiris the skipper sounded the boards and Royal were 4-0 at half time.

After the turn around the Wesley defence could not hold on and the Royal forwards had a field day in this half. Fallool Hallaj who stood out for Royal dribbled past many defenders and sounded the boards to make it 5-0. 6 goal of the day came in at the 47 minute from the left extreme Shami Gajanayake. Marlon Senanayake, Praveen Buddhika and Fallool Hallaj scored a goal each to make it 9-0 victory for Royal.

For Wesley the goalkeeper John Sudarshan was kept extremely busy but had a great game Jesuran Arulraj and centre half Shaeen Jurangpathy played well for Wesley.

The match was umpired by Messers Insaka Samaranayake and Nandasiri Tennakoon. Daya de Silva the chief guest handed the Dudley de Silva shield to the winners and H.N. De Silva the Guest of Honour handed over the certificates in the presence of the two principals Upali Gunasekera of Royal and M.A.P. Fernando of Wesley.

RD