Havies shatter Army dreams with 20-minute firepower
By Riyaz Nadheem
Havelocks rocked Army with the brute force of an attacking eight-man pack in the first twenty minutes of their Clifford cup quarter-final encounter leaving the soldiers stunned and shattered in a record scoring 64 (7goals, 3tries) - 48 (4goals, 4tries) defeat at Longdon Place yesterday. At half time the score line read 42 - 24 in favour of the winners.
Havelock's strategy of taking the game to Army from the kick off with some fast attacking play helped them to topple the more fancied Army outfit. The game had barely passed 20 minutes and Army were already out of the game, the scoreline reading 35 - 05 to the Havies. The spectator standing beside me had just got to the ground and puzzled he remarked had he known the fate of the Soldiers when leaving home, he would not have come.
The game as a contest was over by then and all Army could do was play catch up rugby. They did come close in the 23rd minute of the second half trailing by just 9 points at 52 - 43. But a careless error by their centre whose punt was blocked by his opposite number Takka who picked up and scored, put paid to any chance they had of climbing out from the valley of the doomed.
Army's defeat was largely because they could not find any answer to the Havies forwards play in the first twenty minutes. Their eight were outplayed and out run and Havelocks indeed had the better and more productive set of foreign players.
Skipper Hassan led the Havelocks from the front with a tireless display. Even in the final minutes of the game he was seen battling in defence. Centre Waka too made an outstanding contribution, both in attack and defence. The 3 tries he scored were at crucial stages of the game.
The first try was probably the best and it was scored by Army. They were awarded a penalty in the 3rd minute beneath their posts 10 meters out. The eight took play upwards before centre Ian Simeon made broke the defence. The ball changed hands continuously for half the length of the pitch before centre Kapila Noordeen fell over for an unconverted try.
But that was all the attacking they did as it seemed that the try had woken up a sleeping giant. Havelock's try scoring machine got into action and they scored 5 times before Army could strike back.
The game though full of open rugby lacked the flare of a knock-out encounter. The tackling and defending was extremely poor by both sides resulting in a Score line never recorded in an A division Rugby match here before.
Havelocks crossed the Army goal line ten times through Takka 3, Lock Wacca 3, Winger Lakpala Perera 2, No.8 Hassan and lock Lalaindra Rodrigo one each. Prasad Perera converted six of them while Alex Nishantha obliged with one conversion. For Army centre Ian Simien 3, Centre Kapila Noordeen 2, and Flanker Karunaratne, winger Vajira Jayatillake and No. 8 Oxe scored the tries. T.H Silva converted four of them. Dilroy Fernando refereed.
Today CH&FC will take on Navy at Longdon Place. Kick off 4.45 pm.
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