By Harsha Amarasinghe

St. Peter's College Inter-Schools Under-19 League Rugby Tournament campaign began with a shocker as a second half onslaught from S. Thomas' College handed the Petes a 19 points (three tries, two conversions) to 20 points (two tries, two conversions, two penalties) defeat in their curtain raiser match played at Mount Lavinia yesterday (28).

Leading 14-0 at half time the Petes were on course to a victory but the Thomians well and truly turned the table on their opponents in the second half racking up 20 points in front of their home crowd.

It was such an extraordinary turn around as the School by the Sea that had a really poor first half, were leading 20-14 within a matter of 20 minutes into the resumption with the Petes requiring a converted try going into injury time.

St. Peter's hooker Julian Charles' grin was more consistent than his team's ball handling on the day, and the front rower gave them glimpse of hopes when he touched down off the final play of the match, yet leaving his kicker Thenuka Nanayakara a slightly difficult conversion.

Nanayakara who actually had a pretty good game upto that moment was not quite able to rise to the occasion as he failed with the conversion which was followed up by celebrations from S. Thomas’ players who went on to retain the Archibald Perera Memorial Trophy.

Earlier, S. Thomas’ second choice place-kicker Jaan de Zoysa led their fightback in the second half.

Having booted over a 46th minute penalty to get them going, he ended up with 10 points adding seven more points with a couple of conversions and a penalty.

Wing three quarter Sadak Ishak thrilled their fans with a sparkling run right through the Peterite defence in the 58th minute just two minutes after hooker Lashendra de Silva's opening try for the Thomians.

The Peterites probably lost the game in the first half despite taking a healthy half time lead during which time the Thomians seemed to have had butter in their fingers.

Centre Sandesh de Mel gave them the lead just two minutes into the kick-off diving over having collected an inside pass from Nanayakara who made the conversion before their second try in the fifth minute by scrum half Ravin Fernando gave them a commanding lead.