Rajans going great guns this season

By S M Jiffrey ABDEEN- Kandy Sports Corr

Dharmaraja College, Kandy will have a mission to be achieved and they are hell bound to achieve it and the way they are performing, this season, they are certain to reach the goals they have set for themselves. The mission is to get themselves promoted to the ‘A’ division of the Schools Rugby Tournament.

Last season inept performances at the beginning of the schools rugby season saw them being demoted to the Segment ‘B’ of Division one. But they are there this season with vengeance and are determined to get back where they were last year.

Leading the Rajans this year will be third year player and centre Miyuri Hewawasam, a very hard runner and a bone jarring tackler and one of the top scorers of tries this season. The vice captain of the side is third year player Lochana Ekanayake who will play as No 8 and is one of the hardest tacklers in the side. It may not be wrong to state he is the ‘chip of the old block’ – his father the famous C S Ekanayake was himself a very hard tackler and captained Dharmaraja College in 1982 and also played with distinction for Kandy Sports Club and captained the club in 1988.

In all there are 11 seniors playing for the Rajans this season which makes them a team to watch and be as good as any school playing in the Segment ‘A’ of the tournament. The senior players in the side are prop Rukmal Dissanayake, prop Nalaka Kumara Dulaksha Weerakoon, hooker Anjana Weeraratne, lock Ishanka Manamperi, lock Lochana Fernando, flanker Malinda Herath, fly half Rochana Hettiarachchi, centre Tharuka Wickremanayake, winger Lahiru Fernando, full back Tilina Wijesinghe.

This means most of the players have been playing together for two years and some of them for three years and the blend is there. The real strength of the Rajans lies in their back division and they have been scoring very heavily this season. They beat Carey College 82-0, beat Lumbini College 104-0, beat Nalanda College 41-0 and St. Sylvester's College 73-26 and are now close to 300 point mark in four matches. In the past Dharmaraja College has produced some fine ruggerites like Shanthi Mendis who played for Air Force and Sri Lanka, late Dayananda Jayasundera (Police and Sri Lanka).

These two players did not play school rugby as the Rajans did not have a rugby team during their time but took to the game after leaving school. Then there was Upali Ekanayake, Sumedha Jayasinghe, Ajantha Samarakoon, Indrajith Bandaranayake one of the finest wingers/ centre this country has seen, Tilak Jayasundera, Saranath Hettiarachchi, Avantha Hettiarachchi, Radhika Hettiarachchi, just to name a few.The team is coached by former Kandy SC and Sri Lanka Army ruggerite Nimal Wijesiri.