CHRIS DHAMBARAGE
COLOMBO – St. Joseph’s College pulled off a nail-biting 3-0 victory over Wesley College in their Inter-Schools Under-19 Division One League Rugby Tournament first-round fixture played at the Royal Sports Complex in Colombo.
In a scrappy game of rugby, marred with plenty of handling errors by both teams, St. Joseph’s managed to scrape home with Ruchitha Rodrigo firing the solitary penalty as early as in the second minute of play.
No one would have believed that this would have been the only points of the game, but it remained until the final whistle as the Josephians managed to secure their first win of the tournament.
The Wesleyites, of course, had more chances during the latter stages of the game but they just could not convert possession into points despite having a numerical advantage after St. Joseph’s were handed two yellow cards.
Meanwhile, the reigning league champions Isipathana College powered their way to another victory as they defeated S. Thomas’ College 29-20 in their encounter played at Mount Lavinia.
Isipathana’s victory also had a great amount of significance as they were able to collect a bonus-point for the second week in-a-row, that will put them on top of the points table once again.
Isipathana made a flying start to the game as they ran down two early tries through their speedy three quarters with Kalindu Silva and Rinesh Silva doing the honours as they went on to build up a commanding 17-3 lead at half time.
Isipathana soon sealed the contest in their favour shortly after the break with back-to-back tries by Hashan Randimal and Chamath Iroshan as they increased the lead to 29-3 at that stage.
The Thomians had the consolation of scoring two converted tries during the latter stages through Mohommad Hakeem and Shanal Fernando, which helped them at least to reduce the final deficit.
