Royal too good for St Anthony’s

Singer Inter-School Rugby

By M. Shamil Amit

Royal proved to be too good for St Anthony’s as they cruised through to an easy 25-12 victory in their Singer Division 1A inter-school rugby encounter played at the Royal Sports Complex ground in Reid Avenue yesterday. Infact it was the sixth successive defeat for the Kandy lads this season.

The home team having led 10-5 at lemons accumulated their points through five tries as against a goal and a try by the visitors. The Antonians lacked the need of a place kicker. Their regular place kicker scrum half Imad Reyal was nowhere near his kicking capabilities as he fluffed three simple penalties of kicking range which could have put the Royalists under pressure.
Likewise the Royalist too made the same mistake as they too were unable to make any conversions with three being fluffed right in front of the posts.

A Royal player is stopped in his tracks while the referee asks play to go on. (Pic Ranjith Perera)

But credit cannot be taken away from the Royalists as their forwards combined well to run circles around the Antonians and taking advantage of all the opportunities they got. It was skipper and wing three quarter Suwinda Lenaduwa who gave Royal a roaring start within the first ten minutes of play having received a pass from one of his team mates sprinted off to score down the left corner flag. A few minutes later they increased their lead with another unconverted try through full back Mushin Faleel.

In between this Imad Reyal failed to decrease the lead when he fluffed the first penalty. Thereafter he did not succeed in two more penalties that were offered with one striking the post and the other was a simple one just 15 metres front of the post.

But the Antonians undeterred succeeded after putting the Royalist under pressure with some splendid attacks with skipper and winger Chanaka Gunaratne doing the finishing touches from a five metre scrum five minutes before the half way stage before referee Irshad Cader blew the short whistle.

The second half saw Royal playing with more cohesion as they ruffled the Antonian defence. With the ball in the Antonian territory they succeeded when their opponents were penalized for an infringement just five metres away from the line as No 8 Bilal Hassan crept through for a push over try.

The Antonians replied through a try again from skipper Chanaka Gunaratne with this time Reyal making no mistake with the conversion. This was followed by two more tries by Royal with Bilal Hassan going over for his second try of the match in the same pattern as his previous one and the other one by flanker Hasitha Bandaranayake in the dying stages of the match which sealed the game for the Royalists.