Late burst take Kings out of the woods

Kingswood – 29 Royal – 12

By Rangi Akbar

A feast of scoring in the last 12 minutes enabled Kingswood to gain a hard fought 29-12 win over Royal in the A Division Inter-School rugby game at the Royal Complex yesterday. It was Royal who led 12-10 at the breather. Kingswood’s points came off two goals and three tries while Royal’s 12 points were made up of a goal and a try.

A Kingswood player with the ball looks for a break, but is held back by the Royal defence. Pic by Saman Kariyawasam.

Kingswood bristled with several Sri Lanka Under 19 players but Royal fought back undaunted against gigantic odds. Royal came into the game with wins over Wesley, Thurstan and Ananda and one hardly ever expected them to get the better of Kingswood who had a far superior outfit. They are coached by Kandy SC’s outstanding player Priyantha Gunaratne. To further boost their chances this year Kingswood has even recruited a foreign consultant coach in Paul Gallagher of Ireland, who is attached to the famed Terenure College RFC.

The game belonged to Kingswood in the first half with their outstanding centers Gayan Weeraratne and Thilina Manoj punching gaping holes in the Royal defence. But Royal was unnerved. They tackled with gusto and kept the marauding Kingswoodians well at bay. Kingswood’s full back Chula Gamage too caught the eye with his safe collections, cool clearances. Once he made an exciting inroad to Royal territory with a jinxing run before he was brought down by the alert Royal defence.

Kingswood showed that they meant business in the second minute itself when centre Gayan Weeraratne scored far left off a short tap. Gayan’s brother Roshan Weeraratne fluffed the conversion.

Then came a peach of a move by Royal when winger Asif Hussain who intercepted a pass and blazed through to score. Omar Hassan (son of former Royal rugby stalwart Iqbal Hassan) missed the conversion. The scores were deadlocked at 5 each at this stage.
In the 17th minute Kingswood continued the tit-for-tat scoring when Roshan Weeraratne put the finishing touches to a three-quarter move and thus surged into the lead at 10-5.

Royal’s reply to this was a push over try by hooker Ayesh Rajapakse and Omar Hassan had his kicking boots this time to put Royal ahead at 12-10.

The second half belonged to Kingswood. They tried every trick in the trade to score. Unruffled Royal rose to the occasion and fought back bravely. They had a chance of scoring when they were awarded a penalty. But they opted for a scrum with the intention of scoring. Perhaps this would have given them the edge over the Peradeniya Road lads. But it was simply not to be!
After a titanic struggle where Royal kept a close check on the Kingswood movements with good spoiling work and breathtaking tackles, Kingswood’s fly-half C.P. Wijetunga showed a clean pair of heels to score an unconverted try far right. This put Kingswood ahead at 15-12.

Then came the final exciting 12 minutes for Kingswood. The floodgates of tries came when flanker G.S. Ratnayake scored and Roshan Weeraratne kicked correctly to put them firmly ahead at 22-12. Just to make double sure of their victory center Thilina Manoj scored off a short tap and Weeraratne was in fine form with the conversion to seal the game in Kingswood’s favour at 29-12.

Royal face another tough encounter next week when they take on St. Anthony’s Katugastota in Kandy and Kingswood take on their Blaze Shield rivals Wesley in the first leg which should be a cake-walk for them.

Referee Dilroy Fernando let the game flow. This paved the way for many exciting moments.