The most looked forward Bradby Shield rugby encounter between traditional rivals Royal College and Trinity College is on a knife-edge amid continuing COVID-19 disruption.
Even last year the match was not played for the same reason. There is growing optimism that the Bradby Shield rugby match between Royal and Trinity could be played as the country gets back to normal from the Coronavirus pandemic.
Last year’s Bradby was the 76th but the match did not take place. The two games were to be played on May 30 and on June 13.
The Bradby Shield encounter is the highlight of the schools rugby calendar. These two schools were among the first schools to take up the sport and continued meeting since they first met in July 1920.
From this game it was a yearly encounter. In 1945, the Principal of Royal, Edward Lawrence Bradby, put forward the idea of a trophy to which the Principal of Trinity C. E. Simithraaratchy gave the fullest backing.
Royal Principal offered a wooden shield designed and made by Kandyan silversmiths. It is a wooden disk decorated with intricate traditional Kandyan silver works.
The agreement was the shield should be presented to the winning team’s captain soon after the final whistle of the second leg.
At present the Under-18 game is played for the C. E. Simithraaratchy Cup, which was donated by an old boy called George Hemachandra.
Thus the two principals who went all out for the Bradby have two trophies named in their memory. Only one encounter was played between the schools in 1971 due to security reasons.
Royal won and first leg and the second leg was not played. The Principal of Trinity, late E. L. Fernando based on the result of the first leg at an assembly of Royal presented the Shield to that year’s Captain F. R. Perera.
The first Bradby game was in 1945 when Royal led by C. D. L. Fernando beat Trinity led by Robert Sourjah 3-0 in the first leg in Colombo.
However, in the game played in Kandy the Trinitians managed to win 6-0 under S. B. Pilapitya, who led the second leg and clinched the Shield in the inaugural year on the basis of aggregate.
Half break dummies
The famous Trinity fly half Irwin Howie who is now residing in Australia cut the Royal defence with his half break dummies and slicing runs that gave the threes enough room to maneuver and fashion tries.
According to the fixture card, the second leg was to be played in Kandy on July 17. The game was to be played at Peradeniya Campus Ground and there was a last minute change with the venue shifted to Nittawela as there were threats by anti-social elements to disturb the game if it was played at Peradeniya.
So, the change was done and the Kandy school was not happy with the change as Trinity have never won against Royal at Nittawela – not even with the best of sides. At that time the Bogambara Ground was under re-development.
In this famous second leg game, there was a sea of heads at Nittawela. The crowd was over 15,000 and one of the largest seen at that time with plenty of bands and fanfare.
‘Kadalaya’ from Royal and ‘Kotal’ and ‘Perumal’ from Trinity were dancing and cheering before the game.
The famous commemorator Bob Harvie took his seat just with 10 minutes to go before the game and a film unit was at Nittawela for the first time. This marked the first time a rugby game was filmed in the country.
Both sides were seen warming up and the referee was Ashley Cader. The game kicked off with Trinity on the entrance end and Royal on the Nittawela temple side.
Royal took the kick off as Sourjah did the honours and the ball went just passing the 10 yard line. The ball was held by Lalith Ramanayake and Royal’s flankers Javid Yusuf and Tima Lazarus were there and the forwards forced a scrum.
Royal won the ball through Dushy Perera and the ball was held in the third row but Trinity’s Ralph Roberts kicked the ball into touch. And for about seven minutes the ball was with the forwards.
Royal won both scrums and line outs through Dushy Perera, Maiya Gunasekara and Fred Pereira. They were faster in the loose as well.
A scrum was forced in the Trinity ‘10’ and Dushy Perera won the ball. Scrum half Ajith Pasqual gave it to Jagath Fernando and from him a quick pass to Senaka Abeyratne who gave it to winger S. Samarage and the full back Sourjah made the overlap and scored left of the upright.
Off-side position
He took the kick, and it went astray. Royal 3 and Trinity nil. Then came a penalty just in front of the post as Trinitian Anura Madawela handled the ball from an off-side position.
Sourjah kicked right to give Royal a 6-0 lead in the 15th minute. At this time the Trinitians were losing all the scrums and line outs while the Royalists were most of the time in the Trinity half.
Again a penalty for Royal from 40 yards out was a difficult one for Sourjah. But yet he put it over to give his side a 9-0 lead and Royal were in complete control of the game.
Then in the 20th minute, Royal faced some sparkling tackles from Skipper Palitha ‘Sam’ Samarasekera. It was especially for Jagath Fernando and when the whistle was blown for half time Royal led 9-0.
When the second half started, Nihal Marambe took the kick and it went to winger Fred Amarasinghe who kicked it to touch leading to a line-out.
In this too, Royal won the ball through Gunasekara who gave it to scrum half Pasqual who in turn gave it back to Fred Pereira who charged down on the blind side for another try to give Royal a clear 12 point to nil lead.
With one more goal Royal could have taken the Shield to Colombo and there was some 20 minutes to go to the end.
At this moment players like Samarasekera, Anura Madawela, Tikiri Marambe and Ralph Roberts were giving their best possible support. Samarasekera was seen changing places with Irwin Howie, mainly to unleash a tackle on Jagath Fernando with 14 minutes of play left.
Again Jagath Fernando came with the ball and Samarasekera gave him a tackle to remember and from this a scrum was formed. Royal again won the ball and it was kicked to Trinity fly half Howie and the ball was sent to the ‘threes’ with Anura Madawela anticipating.
He took the ball to the Royal ‘25’ and a player was blown off side and Trinity had a penalty from about 22 yards.
Nihal Marambe came in to take the kick at goal but there was a change of mind and Trinity took a short tap. Tikiri Marambe sent the ball to Howie who gave it to Roy Balasuriya with only 12 minutes of play left.
At this moment Royal were losing the ball at every move. Then came a penalty for Trinity when Royal flanker Javid Yusuf made a mistake. Trinity had a 35 yard penalty and Nihal Marambe made no mistake as Trinity had three points to Royal’s 12.
Reverse pass
A few minutes later scrum half Marambe made a break and gave the ball to Howie who sent out a reverse pass to Samarasekera. He did everything possible and gave it to Jayantha Weerasinghe who put the final touches by diving over by the corner flag. Nihal Marambe tried his best but failed to put over the conversion.
But with only three minutes remaining the scores read 12-11 in favour of Royal. Samarasekera took the ball and sent a pass to Howie who did everything possible and slipped out a reverse pass to Samarasekera who took the ball into the Royal territory and passed it to winger Weerasinghe to do the needful.
He had an open field as the Royal defence targeted Sam and Irwin. Weerasinghe did the needful and Nihal Marambe added the extra points to give Trinity a victory to be remembered for ever – Trinity 16, Royal 12.
Sadly, today there is less rugby played in this pattern with kicking playing a part. In those days too there was kicking but the kicks were not aimless and taken with a purpose.
The Trinity players who made that unforgettable win happen were Y. S. Ping, Cuda Wadugodaitiya, M. de Silva, Lalith Ramanayake, Niroshan de Silva, Anura Madawela, R. Panaboke, Ralph Roberts, Tikiri Marambe, Irwin Howie, Rohan Kulatunge, Palitha Samarasekera (Captain), Roy Balasuriya, Jayantha Weerasinghe and Nihal Marambe.
Royal had players of the calibre of Janek Ranatunge, Dushy Perera, C. Weerasinghe, Maiya Gunasekara, Fred Pereira, Javid Yusuf, Tima Lazarus, Dimitri Gunasekara, Ajith Pasqual, Jagath Fernando, D. S. Wickremasinghe, Senaka Abeyratne, Fred Amarasinghe, S. Samarage and F. R. Sourjah.
0 comments:
Post a Comment