St. Peter’s firm favourites as rugby knockouts set to commence sans Royal

By A Special Sports Correspondent

Seven of the best school rugby teams this season will vie for honours when the Dialog sponsored under 19 inter-school President’s Trophy knockout tournament commences without runners-up in the league tournament, Royal College.

This is not the first time that Royal has pulled out of the knockouts and even to date there is no reason given for their unavailability for the upcoming rugby tournament which is conducted by the Schools Rugby Football Association. However, strangely or understandably this Royal side has made a commitment to play their traditional fixture against S. Thomas’ on Saturday (August 27) instead of featuring in the knockouts. The knockout tournament commences on Friday (August 25) with D.S Senanayake taking on Zahira at Havelock Park. It must be mentioned here that these two teams have come a long way having featured in the bottom grade or Division 1 Segment B last season before the tournament organizers handed them promotions.

This year’s league tournament winners St. Peter’s are the hot favourites to win the knockouts, but they’ll have competition coming their way from sides like Isipatana, St. Anthony’s and Trinity. The seven teams in the knockout are St. Joseph’s, St. Peter’s, Trinity, D.S Senanayake, St. Anthony’s , Zahira and reigning champions Isipatana. The ‘Green Jerseys’ will get a bye and go straight into the semi finals of the tournament. Unlike in past years there is no provision for one of the top two teams in Division 1 Segment B to fill in the void created by a team pulling out of this tournament; conducted for teams in Division 1 Segment A. Otherwise Sri Sumangala Kandy or Thurstan College Colombo-the two teams qualifying to play in Segment A next year-could have had a go in the knockouts.

Last year Isipatana won the knockout trophy beating St. Joseph’s 49-22 in the final. The quarterfinal matches to be played at Havelock Sports Club are: D.S Senanayake vs Zahira (August 25), St. Anthony’s vs St. Joseph’s (August 26), St. Peter’s vs Trinity (August 27).