Defending inter-school League rugby champions St. Peter’s College brought Royal College’s winning streak to an end with a most telling performance as they won the much awaited match by 31 points to 17 in a relatively one-sided game at the Royal Complex ground in Colombo yesterday.
Royal were so much outplayed that the Peterites were able to seal the result in the first half itself with a half time score of 24-3 and any hopes the home team would have had of staging a return to the contest was shattered when devastating Peterite winger Vishenka Silva crossed the line in the second half for his team to secure a 31-3 lead.
Vishenka who has become the envy of the rest of the schools in the fray for his powerful runs had the last laugh by scoring two tries in the match after referee Raveen Alexander sent him off with a yellow card for a dangerous tackle on a Royal player in the third minute of play. Vishenka in the process took his season try-tally to 13 from six matches.
Overall nothing went right for Royal against some hard tackling by the Peterites until the dying moments of the game when the Peterites virtually allowed them to score two consolation tries through centre Yuwan Pathirana in the dying moments of the game.
But the fact that Royal had to wait for 55 of the 70 minutes of play to score their first try only showed the extent to which the Peterites took them on well prepared as nothing worked for the home team not even their rolling maul which they apparently gave up.
In the first half it took a while for the Peterites to settle in and thanks to their fly half Raul Denish who produced a searching kick that forced a line-out deep in the Royal half they got into their act together to score the first of five tries through winger Praneeth Silva followed by cetre Umith Shihara touching down to step up the tempo.
It culminated in Pasindu Bandara and Vishenka Silva making two runs covering nearly 70 metres unchallenged on both occasions to score tries that gave the Peterites a bonus point.
In reality the Peterites showed the Royal supporters what they did not want to see by crossing the line for three tries in the first half, the first by centre Umith Shihara followed by full back Pasindu Bandara and the thunderbolt winger Vishenka Silva making powerful unstoppable runs.
