Making sure not to tarnish their chances of retaining the Dialog Division ‘A’ Inter-Club League Rugby Championship 2016, Kandy Sports Club dished out a neat performance to foil Police Sports Club by 34-9 in their first round game played at Nittawela yesterday. Cutting the errors down to a minimum, Kandy SC played clinically to grab [...]

The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Kandy make short work of Police challenge

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Making sure not to tarnish their chances of retaining the Dialog Division ‘A’ Inter-Club League Rugby Championship 2016, Kandy Sports Club dished out a neat performance to foil Police Sports Club by 34-9 in their first round game played at Nittawela yesterday. Cutting the errors down to a minimum, Kandy SC played clinically to grab a 17-9 lead at halftime.

They scored five tries, three conversions and a penalty while conceding three penalties to allow the Cops collect their points in the first half.
The game kicked off under gloomy conditions with Kandy dominating from the first whistle but they allowed Police to draw first blood through a penalty from fullback Rajitha Sansoni after the game was 12 minutes old.

Two minutes on, centre Kanchana Ramanayake scored, collecting a kick from fullback Thilina Wijesinghe, who made the conversion. Kandy’s comfortable lead of 7-3 lasted for 15 minutes until they sniffed a possible challenge from the Cops who cut down the lead by just one point with another Sansoni penalty.
Exactly one minute later, Kandy went ahead by adding three points to their tally off a penalty kicked by Wijesinghe and they stretched the lead from 7-6 to 10-6. In the 36th minute, Kandy’s most experienced and most favoured star, Fazil Marija marked his presence by touching down far left after a few dazzling moves. Wijesinghe made a difficult kick look easy to add the extra points. Four minutes later, moments before halftime Kandy’s lead of 17-6 was again challenged by a penalty from Sansoni but the Cops were still trailing 9-17 at halftime.

Despite the never-ending assault by the Cops after the resumption, Kandy were sturdy and did not allow their opponents to make use of any opportunity. Kandy added 17 more points to their tally while thwarting Police from adding a single point in the second half.

They touched down thrice and the best out of the three was second try scored far left by lock Shehan Pathirana, who snatched the ball from the scrum and worked to run and cross the line. The first try in the second half was scored by skipper Roshan Weeraratne and the third was posted by Richard Dharmapala — both under-the-post. Weeraratne’s try was neatly put through by Wijesinghe, who scored nine points through kicks, but the latter two were taken by substitute fly-half Arshad Jamaldeen, who failed at both attempts. The match was controlled by Dinka Peiris. – AK

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