Trinity Vs. St. Peter’s Rugby Encounter | Live Match Stream

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May - 19 - 2011
Y. Dahanayake

Part 1:

Part 2:

video streams courtesy of thepapare.com

 

The match is now over.. but you can watch the recorded match videos above.

We will also be broadcasting the Bradby Shield 1st Leg Live next Saturday the 28th of May 2011 from 4.30 p.m. onwards on trinitylk.com. Click Here to visit the live match stream page.

 

Full Time Scores:

Trinity – 34

St. Peter’s – 10.

 

Scores at Half-Time:

Trinity – 12

St. Peter’s – 10


Click Here to see all the Trinity Rugby Fixtures & Results of 2011 season.

 

Trinity Vs St. Peter’s Annual Rugby Encounter:

Chronicle of the 7-Decade Old Battle

YEAR RESULT WINNING CAPTAINS
2000 DRAW
2001 PETERS Dilan Abeygoonawardene
2002 PETERS Dilanka Wijesekera
2003 DRAW
2004 TRINITY H.S Perera
2005 TRINITY B.N.R Fernando
2006 DNP
2007 PETERS Ranuka Jayasinghe
2008 PETERS Poornaka Delpachithra
2009 TRINITY Vishwajith Wijesinghe
2010 PETERS Keith Gurusinghe

Winners of the past 10 years


Rugby at its best; a saga of brawn and brawl, of momentous drama, in a spirit of fairness over a 70 year period while serving a bellyful of butterflies to spectators. This is the chronicle of the St. Peter’s vs. Trinity Rugby Encounter. Captured in a nutshell is what it is worth during its past 70 encounters. Never a dull moment; rarely a one sided encounter, though the Peterites had a streak of not crossing the winning post for 44 long years.

This is the 3rd longest schools rugby encounter in Sri Lanka and was christened way back in 1933 in Kandy. Now it makes its bi-annual return to one of the oldest rugby arenas amongst schools, if not the oldest, the Murray field of Schools rugby in Sri Lanka, St. Peter’s College Grounds, Bambalapitiya. The two leading schools rugby teams lock horns this Friday the 20th May with both St. Peter’s and Trinity, looking forward to relive the traditions and inch their way towards winning the schools rugby league for 2011. One is defending the title which they have now won four times during the past decade and the other, yet to lay hands on this silverware which has strangely eluded them for the past 24 years even though they came so close a few times since Tyrrell Rajapakse lead one of the best XV’s produced by Trinity in the modern era back in 1987 to win the schools rugby league as well as the knockout titles.

Peterites under Banuka Nanayakkara have already stamped their authority in this year’s league with convincing wins in succession, even though one might call their ever so speedy and crafty set of threes are yet to meet a formidable opponent. They will be fully tested for the first time this season by Murad Ramzeen and his Trinity lions this Friday. It has been an interesting and thrilling battle, as seen in many encounters that these two teams have played for the past 70 years. Those who followed this series would vouch for this, and others who followed this year’s league will dare to doubt it. This will be a battle between two contrasting styles of play with the Peterites opting for fast open rugby this season with their nimble footed three quarter line being put to the maximum use and the Trinitians sticking to a more power packed style of play using their heavy and sturdily built forwards and backs. The center of attraction will be Peterite Danushka Ranjan who has a punch line to match his jaw dropping performances ‘Catch Me if You Can!’ and Trinitian winger Sashan Mohomed who is equally fast and unstoppable when in full throttle. When these two teams met last year at the Lion’s den at Pallekelle, Peterites under Keith Gurusinghe scored a runaway 31-10 victory and went on to become the unbeaten schools rugby champs for 2010. This was the highest winning score by a Peterite XV to date. As far as the series is concerned, Trinity holds sway with an unbeatable margin.

It takes a lot of pride and courage to beat Trinity College in rugby and it has been ever since as Trinity is perceived to be the cradle of Sri Lankan rugby for a long while. In fact, Royal College who is also currently one of the forerunners for the schools rugby plum, started playing competitive rugby in 1920 and took 21 years to beat Trinity. Even though many schools have joined the fray since the mid 1950’s and made their presence felt in the local rugby scene, this year, little known Science College pulled off a shocking win against the Lions. The passion and pride to beat Trinity still lingers amongst many current players and those of who played it in the yesteryear.

Going through the rugby annals it is interesting to note that the St. Peter’s vs. Trinity encounter has more than rugby to it. This goes back 78 years, to the year 1933 when the legendary Archibald Perera stepped out for St. Peter’s College after having learnt his ABC’s from Trinity College earlier and went on to wear the blue, white & gold jersey for four consecutive years with the year 1936 being his finest. This was the year Sri Lanka, back then called Ceylon witnessed Archie’s invincible side “who were a class of their own” as called many times over by renown writer Sharm De Alwis, who himself is a Trinitian. Archi also had the honor of beating Trinity with his individual brilliance with a last minute penalty conversion to make it 3-0 over a star studded Lions. Archi became an integral part of Peterite rugby since 1933 until his demise in 1982, of almost 50 years, of which he coached Peterites for 25 years. Ironically he produced many champion teams and many more outstanding Sri Lankan players than any other coach. However, during the period of his coaching of 25 years he did not have lady luck smile on him to beat Trinity. From 1956 to1982, under Archie’s coaching, St. Peter’s battled 13 close encounters where Trinity’s winning margin was 5 points or less in addition to three thrilling draws. The toughest period for Archie would have been in the period 1965 to1975, when St. Peter’s featured in 10 very close losses out of the 11 games that were played.

In addition, both teams used to play this encounter in the past as a prelude to the Bradby 1st leg or between the first and second legs, such as this year. There have been many times when both these teams have come with unbeaten tags for this encounter. This has given headaches to sports journalists in picking their favourites and also gives rugby lovers the prospect of witnessing a mouth watering encounter. The star studded line up of players that these two teams represent attract the crowds, be it at Bambalapitiya, Nittawela or Bogambara and makes this encounter one of the most looked forward to schools rugby encounters every year.

This series has a touch of unpredictability, aura of mystery and a sense of uncanny situations generating results when one was least expecting and in many cases during the dying stages of the game.

One of the most talked about encounters of the 60’s, was the 1967 game dubbed as ‘The match of the decade’ when two unbeaten sides met at St. Peter’s College grounds with one of the biggest crowds seen for a rugger match at that time. The Peterites were led by Rodney Patternott and had the best team on the paper with the likes of C Nirmalendren, Ronnie Gunaratna, Mintzy Gomes, Sunil Perera, Hamish Paternott, and Desmond Harridge. Trinity was led by Ajith Abeyaratne and had in their ranks Sundaralingam, Maldivian Afiz, and Errol Warne. St. Peter’s and Trinity fought off a ding dong battle and the Petes were in the lead at 6-3. But a last minute try by Gogi Thilakaratne for Trinity, which was converted from a difficult corner angle by Alex Lazarus made sure Trinity won this encounter by 8-6. This was after the Peterites missed many scoring opportunities including a knock on by a Peterite three quarter, inside the Trinity goal after collecting a clean ball from a fellow player who cleared the entire Trinity defense.

Since the turn of the new century from 2000, the Peterites have dominated the head to head contests with five wins, three losses and two draws from the 10 encounters of which five games could be categorized as close encounters. However the Peterites have a mountain or two to climb to catch-up the losses against Trinity in the 70 encounters they’ve played so far. It is yet to be seen how Trinity and St. Peter’s will carry on their form during this new decade and continue their uncanny traditions with the series. Both teams have shown a lot of character, skills and passion to do well this season. Their coaching structures and support band wagons are geared up to liven up Rugby at its best spirit for many years to come. While the boys play their hearts out on the field let the game entertain everyone outside the field as the saga continues…

– Extracted from the article written by Sujith Silva from thescore.lk


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