Defence Services retain Senior National Hockey title

Chris Dhambarage

Defence Services HA retained the men’s senior national hockey title for the second successive year while outplaying last year’s runners up Matale HA comprehensively by nine goals to one in the final worked off at the Police Park in Bambalapitiya yesterday.

Defence Services HA completed another successful tournament and added the finishing touches in a spectacular manner. They certainly proved too strong for the Matale HA stickers and were ahead by five goals to one at half time.

Defence Services HA succeeded in scoring as many as 23 goals during the entire tournament and conceded only a solitary goal to Sri Lanka Schools HA in their opening encounter. Matale HA who showed promise at the beginning failed to live upto expectations as they surrendered quite meekly.

Defence Services HA rallied around through their superb team effort underlined their dominance while scoring goals at regular intervals through M. M. Mulafer, K. Ganegoda, P. N. Cramer, Keerthi Kumara, D. Abeyratne and D. Weerasuriya. Earlier in the semifinals Defence Service HA routed Colombo HA by a convincing margin of six goals to nil and Matale HA had the better of State Services HA by two goals to nil.

Defence Services HA in fact made a complete mockery of their opponents while sounding the board at regular intervals in a completely one sided contest.

They took the initiative by scoring three early goals and made sure that there will be no contest during the latter stages of the game.

The early damage was done by their most consistent goal scorer of the tournament M. M. Mulafer who went on to complete a unique hattrick while scoring the first three goals of the match.

Defence Services HA added three more goals in the second quarter through the sticks of Keerthi Kumara (1) and K. Perera (2).

In contrast Matale HA went through some anxious moments before overcoming State Services HA two nil in their semifinal encounter. The exchanges were almost even during the first half in which Matale HA managed to snatch a close one nil lead following a splendid effort from M. B. Marapona.

Matale HA then settled down and began to dominate the proceedings in the second half as they were able to create more scoring opportunities through their dynamic set of forwards. However State Services HA were equal to the task and succeeded in putting up a solid defence that frustrated their opponents to a great extent.

Matale HA then sealed the game in their favour with centre Dawson Devindra scoring their second goal shortly before the final whistle.

Meanwhile Colombo HA defeated State Services HA one nil on single stroke penalties in the consolation final for the third place.

The match ended in a four all draw at the completion of the normal time and the scores were still level four all after the penalty strokes.