Sri Lanka Sports News | Online edition of Daily News

DateLine Wednesday, 22 April 2009

News Bar »

News: No pause necessary ... Political: Multiple voting prohibited ... Business: IMF loan on track ... Sports: Hayden, Murali sparkle for Chennai ...

Home

dailynews
ONLINE

Royal packed with experience

Chris Dhambarage

Royal College with nine coloursmen and two Sri Lanka youth players in their ranks are confident of enjoying a great amount of success when the new inter school rugby season kicks off this week. Royal College will face an acid test when they confront the traditional rivals S. Thomas’ College in their curtain raiser match of the season for the Michael Gunaratne Trophy at Mount Lavinia on Friday.

This year they will play a total of eight matches including the two Bradby Shield fixtures against Trinity College Kandy.

Royal College began their preparations in November last year and are making steady progress under the watchful eyes of New Zealand coach Theo Serafie and assisted by former Royal wing three quarter Bilal Yusuf.

This is of course not the first time that Royal have got down the services of a foreign coach and are hoping that Theo’s services will help them to make a significant impact in the up coming season.

Incidentally Theo has a great amount of experience in coaching several schools teams and was instrumental in guiding S. Thomas’ College during the 2007 season.

In addition their assistant coach Bilal Yusuf was a member of the 2002 champion Royal team. This season they will be concentrating purely on their traditional matches and their prime target is to regain the Bradby Shield which they surrendered last year.

Royal after losing the first leg in Colombo 12-24, came back magnificently to beat their traditional rivals Trinity College 8 nil in the second leg worked off in Kandy. However the lads from Reid Avenue lost the Bradby Shield on an aggregate of 20-24.

This was probably one of the biggest setbacks for Royal last season which otherwise would have been a highly successful tournament where they were able to notch up five good victories out of nine games which put them in the fourth place in the league.

Royal College made a promising start to last years season where they did well to emerge runners up in the Singer under 20 seven a side tournament. However they had a shock start in the league tournament while going down to Isipatana College 12-17 in their opening encounter.

This was followed by another defeat at the hands of Kingswood College Kandy. Royal then produced one of their best performances in the season to beat St. Anthony’s College by a convincing margin of 43 points to nil on their home grounds at Reid Avenue.

But their most significant effort was the 17-12 triumph against the high riding St. Peter’s College team. Royal College who went in as the underdogs were able to turn tables on their more fancied opponent’s with a spectacular performance on their home grounds.

Royal’s other significant performance was their success against S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia which enabled them to retain the Michael Gunaratne Trophy for the third successive year.

Despite going in at the back drop of a demoralising 12-24 defeat at the hands of Trinity College in the previous week, Royal were able to put up a stunning performance and take the game by 22 points to five points.

Royal College will have a strong pack once again with two Sri Lanka Youth players Kalana Amarasinghe and Hasthika Bandaranayake in the line up. In addition they will also have the services of few season campaigners - vice captain Nikira Senanayake, Udara de Silva, Shamir Fajudeen and Ranga Perera

The back division will be studded with players of the calibre of centres Duminda Attygalle, Shamil Ahamed, Winger Nabeel Faizer, full back Shailendra Chandrasekaran and skipper Naren Dhason.