Give me a winner I’ll give you a dime

The second leg of the much looked forward to rugby cum social event of the year takes place at the Royal Sports Complex on Saturday. Hosts Royal goes in to the Bradby Shield with an eight point advantage from the first leg. But this can count for nought as has been proved over and over again through the years. There is an added incentive for the visitors as they will be looking to make it three in a row, while the hosts will be looking to regain the coveted shield after a lapse of two long years. Thus with the stakes so high a do or die battle is almost guaranteed.

Trinity had a break yesterday, while Royal faced another arch rival in S. Thomas’ for the Michael Gunaratne Trophy. But will a week’s break be good or bad. Representatives of both Trinity and Royal had somewhat different views.

The Sunday Times spoke to the Chairman of The Rugby Advisory Committee of Royal Sriyan Cooray. He said: “I do not think it is a good thing. We had the Thomian game yesterday. If that had not been on the schedule we would have arranged a friendly game. It is always better to have a continuous schedule than to have a break in between. In addition we take one game at a time. If you had asked the boys yesterday about the second leg, they would have turned around and asked ‘what second leg? From today we will start preparing”.

Throughout the season Royal have played with fire in the first half and cooled off for parts of the second. This led to their downfall against Kingswood. Even in the first leg it was a last minute try that gave them a two score lead. In addition Trinity are likely to be at full strength after missing a few players through injury in the first leg.

When asked about these issues, Cooray said: “First and foremost we had at least four try scoring opportunities in the first leg which we wasted. On two occasions we went over the touch line and dropped the ball.

Had we taken our chances the margin of victory would have been much more. Something we are working very closely to eradicate handling errors. Those are mistakes one cannot make in a competitive game. I agree that we seem to taper off in the second half. And that is another thing that is being worked on.

However, in Kandy our boys may have been a bit more tired than Trinity because of the altitude difference. We do expect Trinity to field a full strength side and we will change our game plan accordingly.”

President of Trinity Rugby Scrummage Janaka Kiridena said: “We may have been a bit over confident going in to the first leg after our spectacular win over Kingswood. In addition the preparation for the game was not ideal following the aftermath of the Kingswood game. Several players had to go to the police station and court. When I spoke to them a few days before the game they were still dazed. I think five members of the team that took the field were under 17 years of age. And things like this can unfaze an adult leave alone a young boy.”

Kiridena added: “Contrary to speculation I believe that there was a dispute in the venue which is why we did not play yesterday.

But the break has done some good. I believe that all the players are fit. Our skipper Sean Wanigasekera who played only in the second half came off unscathed and I think he has got over the knee problem that kept him out for a couple of games. I am certain the coaching staff will be working on a game plan and we will go all out to win the second leg and retain the Bradby Shield for the third consecutive year.”

Both sides are evenly matched but the focus will be on two in particular. Royal’s forward Bilal Hassen had an outstanding first leg reminding many of the legendary Sri Lankan Hisham Abdeen. Quite a few people have said that if Trinity’s skipper Wanigasekera continues his rugby career after school he is sure to be in the Sri Lankan national team.