Schools battle for Lady Jayatileke, Blaze trophies

By M. Shamil Amit

With the inter-school rugby league and knockout tournaments having come to an end, the clash between the rugby playing schools is for traditional trophies and shields. Four top rugby playing schools S. Thomas’, St. Joseph’s, Wesley and Kingswood  will be in action today.

S. Thomas’ and St. Joseph’s will clash for the Lady Evelyn Jayatileke Shield donated by her son Lucien Jayatileke scheduled to start at 4.15 p.m. in Mt Lavinia.

This will be 66th encounter between the two schools and the Thomians are way ahead havig won the title on 45 occasions to the 17 by the Josephians and three drawn. The Thomians are the holders of the Shield having won last year.

According to the performance of the two teams this season, the Thomians have the edge and are favoured to retain the Shield due to the fact that they had a successful stint in the two major tournaments that were played and ended up as the third best team in Cup segment.

However, they cannot take the Josephians lightly. Even though the Joes had a poor first round of the league tournament, they bounced back in the second round and ended as the Plate runner–up. 

Wesley and Kingswood will battle it out for L.E. Blaze Trophy scheduled to be played under floodlights for the first time from 6.30 p.m. onwards at Longden Place. The trophy was donated by old Kingswoodian Royal de Silva in honour of Louis Edmund Blaze who was the founder of Kingswood College who also has the honour of having introduced rugby to schools in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1891.

Even though the two schools played against each other earlier the Blaze trophy was introduced in 1986 which Kingswood won under the leadership of Ronnie Ibrahim and Wesley achieved their first in 1988 when the side was led  by Shalan Rupasinghe and Shiraz Jaldin.

This will be the 39th match in the series and Wesley are the holders of the Blaze Trophy having won it three times at a stretch while Kingswood last won the trophy in 2019. But overall the Kingswoodians are leading the series with 23 wins as against nine by Wesley and four matches ending in draws.

Wesley will come into the game as hot favouites and with their heads high having succeeded to end up as runner-up to Trinity in the Cup segment.