Wesley stun defending champs St. Peter’s
High riding Wesley College hit the daylights out of defending champions St. Peter’s College as they completely outclassed them to pull off a comfortable 23-5 win in the Dialog Schools League Rugby 2025 match played at Havelock Park yesterday. With this, Wesley recorded their fourth successive win and maintain their unbeaten record.
Wesley, having taken a 8-0 lead at lemons, made up their points through three tries, a conversion and two penalties to the solitary unconverted try scored by St. Peter’s. The defeat for St. Peter’s saw them losing their unbeaten tag which they held for the last two seasons as Schools League champions coming to an end.
Wesley flyhalf Laizer Lye barges through to score a try - Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
The Bamba Brigade were completely outclassed in both defence and attack by the Double Blues, who dominated most of the two sessions of and added to that the match was marred by too much rough play with players from both the sides being sin binned in both sessions.
The hero for Wesley was lock Pawan Thiranagama, whose back-to-back tries in the second half almost sealed the win beyond doubt for them and also fullback Abdul Haadhi, who made useful contributions with his kicking boots.
Wesley dominated in both the sessions of play and had the Peterites running circles. The first scoring was done by Wesley in the 12th minute with fullback Haadhi booted over a penalty, as St. Peter’s missed out on their scoring and erasing the deficit when penalties were kicked astray.
In the 25th minute Wesley surged ahead with flyhalf Laizer Lye going over for an unconverted try and in the dying stages of the first half, a try by Wesley was denied after being determined a forward pass following a TMO review. When the short whistle was blown Wesley led 8-0.
On resumption Wesley continued the onslaught and had the defence of St. Peter’s in tatters. They went ahead in the 38th minute with Haadhi making no mistake with a penalty that was offered to expand the lead to 11-0.
Poor ball handling by St. Peter’s added to their misery but Wesley playing, with much cohesion and giving their opponents some torrid moments, struck with tries within the space of two minutes. Both tries were braced by lock Thiranagama in the 45th and 47th minutes with Haadhi being able to boot over only one conversion.
With just over five minutes of play remaining the Peterites succeeded to breach the Wesley defence with centre Revon Perera going over for an unconverted but it was insufficient to prevent the Double Blue from recording their fourth win of the season. Wesley’s win against St. Peter’s comes after eight years with the last being in 2017 when the side was led by Denuster Gunatileke.