Royal thump Trinity – Records tumble as Bradby Shield returns to Reid Avenue……

An absolute domination by Royal College for 80 minutes over traditional rivals Trinity College saw the Bradby Shield return to Reid Avenue as Bhanuka Gamage’s boys hammered the visiting Kandy side 49 (7-tries, 4-conversions, 2-penalties) – 0 in the second leg of the 71st edition of the country’s oldest school rugby rivalry at Royal Complex in Colombo yesterday.
Despite taking just a one point advantage of the first leg at Pallekelle, Royal did go out as the favourites to win on Saturday, but one may not have expected them to beat Trinity with such a huge margin which eventually turned out to be the biggest victory in Bradby history.
Perhaps at half time when the scores were 18-0, Trinitians knew that the Shield was gone, but they let Royal humiliate them in the second half conceding five tries in front of a packed crowd in Reid Avenue.
Royal had five different try scorers and two of them crossed the white wash twice; one not surprisingly was their highest scorer Supun Warnakulasooriya. The other, however, will not forget this year’s Bradby for several reasons, Mahima Gamage! The dynamic wing three quarter came into this match full of confidence after scoring a fabulous try in the first leg, and he made absolute mockery of his opponents who had no answer to his pace down the right flank.
In the 57th minute of the match he pounced on a mistake made by Trinitians to run a good 50-60 metres before going down, but what would have hurt the Kandy side the most was his second try when he celebrated, while completing it three minutes later.
Number eight Warnakulasooriya of course got them going in what turned out to be an emphatic victory for them when he scored a push over try 15 minutes into the kickoff which was nicely converted by the full back Ovin Askey who went on to add 14 points from his boot. Warnakulasooriya’s second wouldn’t have been Royal’s last of the match had not the substituted three quarter Andrew de Silva dropped the ball in front of the goal line which could have easily been their eighth try of the match.
Among the other try scorers for Royal was wing three quarter Shabith Feroz, flanker Keshan Peiris and centre Akash Iddawela.
Trinity would love to forget this match. They had nothing to talk about apart from a few sparkling runs made by the full back Saranga Gunatilake.
Referee: Anura Rankothge

Royal
49

Trinity
00