Dream and passion to beat Trinity

Sharm DE ALWIS

The dream and the passion that consume schoolboy rugger players would be to beat Trinity. That is the ultimate glory from time immemorial and St Peter’s achieved this honour in only their third meeting in 1935 and that was only four years after the school took to playing rugger.

That they kept winning five times on the trot, lose the next but come back and win although by a wafer-thin margin of 3-NIL speaks volumes for the grit, skills and motivation of the Colombo school which was guided by Archibald Perera.

The fixture was abandoned for six years from 1942 to ‘47 due to World War ll and its aftermath but the Colombo school had clearly shown their superiority that as against three losses they had six wins under the captaincy of Fred Kellar, Percy Perera and Archibald Perera who had crossed over from Trinity together with Claire Roeloffsz [scrum-half] and Henry Young [full back who introduced to the country’s rugger the full-back over-lap just three years after the All-Blacks stormed the rugby scene with this novelty].

On resumption of the series in 1948, although Trinity won handsomely in the early days the Petes have come in with six draws and twelve closely contested encounters. In a number of years both schools were unbeaten until the TCK/SPC game decided who was the over-all winner.

The ties

1966: Glen Van Langenberg/Hamzi Hameed 8-8.

1969: Shafi Jainudeen/Sunil Perera 3-3.

1971: Y.S. Ping/Jizwi Nizar 11-11.

1986: Shenani Gunaratne/Rowen Gunasekera 4-4.

2000: David Luchow/Gladwin Geogesz 10-10.

2003: M. Maddumapetibendi/Rumaiz Ishad 20-20.

Close encounters in which TCK won

1951: Mervyn Panditharatne/Ago Paiva 3-nil.

1955: Mahinda Ratwatte/Desmond Ephraims 5-3.

1963: D.A. Piyasena/Stephen Alagaratnam 6-nil.

1965: M.T.M. Zaruk/Darrel Wimalaratne 8-3.

1967: Ajith Abeyaratne/Rodney Patternott 8-6.

1970: Seevali Samarasekera/Hamish Patternott 11-6.

1972: Athula Unantenna/Jeffrey de Jong 14-10.

1973: Jeffrey Yu/Rohan Wiratunga 10-9.

1975: Rohan Sourjah/Frank Hubert 8-7.

1977: Ravi Balasuriya/Angelo Wickramaratne 9-7.

1998: Prasanna Jayawardena/Rajeev Perera 13-10.

This period when TCK ran out winners or the games ended in a draw, SPC won in:

1985: Rajith Abeygoonawardena’s team 8-0 against M. Jayatissa’s.

1994: Roshara Alles’ team 6-5 against A.M.M. Rally’s.

1995: Sanjeewa Abeygoonawardena’s team 16-7 against Haris Omar’s.

2001: Dilan Abeygoonawardena’s team 24-10 against Tisal Jayawardena’s team.

2002: Dilanka Wijesekera’s team 22-18 against Suren Mendis’.

2007: Ranuka Jayasinghe’s team 24-3 against Sean Wanigasekera’s.

2008: Poornaka Delpachitra’s team 15-10 against Milinda Gunawardena’s.

SPC won the League championship 12 times, the Knock-outs 4 times and entered the Finals 8 times TCK won the League championship 24 times, the Knock-outs twice, entered Finals twice:

1940: TCK beat SPC after 5 years;

2004: TCK beat SPC after 4 years (2 losses, 2 draws).

1985: SPC beat TCK after 43 years (including 3 draws and 6 No Fixtures).

This year’s fixture is scheduled for 23rd May on the St Peter’s grounds and promises to re-kindle embers and to re-light the excitement with the decade’s 4 wins by SPC and 2 by TCK + 2 Draws. Be there and capture the action.