CHRIS DHAMBARAGE
COLOMBO – Royal came from behind with a magnificent performance to beat the traditional rivals Trinity College 27-17 in the 77th Bradby Shield second leg rugby encounter played at the Royal Sports Complex in Colombo on Saturday.
After losing the first leg 10-13 in Kandy, two weeks ago, Royal dished out their trademark rugby to rattle their opponents and to retain the Bradby Shield for the seventh successive year on an aggregate of 37-30.
Royal collected their points from one goal and four tries after leading 17-10 at half time while Trinity responded with one goal, one penalty goal and one penalty.
But it was Trinity who drew first blood with a superb try in the very first minute of the game against the run of play and looked like they would dominate the proceedings from there onwards.
Dashing wing three quarter Sachindu Wanasekera followed fly half Shan Althaf’s attempted drop-kick with good anticipation and collected the loose ball before falling over under the post.
Althaf made no mistake with the conversion and Trinity were able to further extend their overall lead to add pressure on their opponents very early in the game.
However, few minutes later, Royal came back strongly following a good passage of play where their forwards got their act together well for the first time and invaded the Trinity territory after a very affective up and under from fly half Thivain Perera.
The home side never looked back from there onwards and earned a series of five-metre penalties and from the ensuing maul Skipper Randul Senanayake charged in with his forwards to score under the post.
Surprisingly, Simak Shafeek missed the easy conversion but Royal were very much in the game despite trailing 5-7 at that stage.
Royal then snatched the lead for the first time in the game when they scored their second try almost in the same fashion, which was eventually confirmed by the Television Match Official (TMO).
Perera took over the place-kicking duties and added the extra points to make it 12-7 after 14 minutes of play.
Thereafter, the visitors soon launched a counter-attack through some good running rugby to earn a penalty in front of the posts and Althaf obliged the kick to reduce the margin to 10-12 midway in the first half.
Royal were never prepared to surrender this lead to their opponents and they scored their third try shortly before the break to increase the lead to 12-7.
After the interval, the game took a new twist as Trinity were awarded a penalty try by the TMO for a high-tackle and the visitors were able to keep their hopes alive of regaining the Bradby, having last won the Shield outright way back in 2014 under the Captaincy of Tarinda Ratwatte.
But the home side delivered the killer-blow with back-to-back tries as Thivain Perera sprinted his way through the left wing to touch down near the corner flag while substitute Nabeel Yehiya mesmerised the Trinity defence with a superb interception to score almost unchallenged.
Both tries went unconverted but Royal had a healthy 10-point lead to retain the Bradby Shield for another year.
