79th Bradby Shield ROYAL WARY OF TRINITY FIGHTBACK

By M. Shamil Amit

The second leg of the 79th Bradby Shield rugby encounter between traditional rivals Trinity and Royal will get underway today at the Royal Sports Complex. Kick-off is at 4.15 p.m.

Hosts Royal will come into the game with confidence and their heads high having pulled off a 15-5 win in the first leg at Pallekele two weeks ago.

However, Royal led by centre Amika Samarasinghe cannot afford to take things easy as they hold only a lead of ten points. Performance wise, they in fact vastly improved in the latter stages. They were soundly beaten (34-12) by Trinity in the schools rugby tournament league encounter and were underdogs in their Bradby Shield first leg match.

Royal will be bolstered by the return of one of their stars Idris Farouk who missed the first leg due to an injury. Apart from him they have a host of players whom they will depend on in the likes of Didula Jayasuriya, Disas Pathirana, Senuja Ranasinghe, Naqeeb Mohamed, Yuwan Pathirana, Dilanka Perera, Shimak Shafeek and Savistha Fernando.

Trinity the reigning schools league champions led by centre Usmaan Shafraz will be seeking to make amends as in the latter stages of the season they underwent back to back defeats to St. Peter’s and Royal but for sure they would have remedied their shortcomings.

The cynosure of all eyes no doubt is going to be fly half Shan Althaf who was responsible for them bagging the Bradby Shield last year by converting a penalty in the last minute for Trinity to pull off a close 25-22 victory. They possess top notch players in the likes of Nisith Kumarasinghe, Shrayan Satishkumar, Akash Fernando, Manusha Silva, Evin Jayasena, Onija Kodituwakku, Sadeesha Weerawansa, Manusha Silva, Hamza Abdeen and Abdul Malik to deliver the goods.

This will be the third time that the two teams are confronting each other and they know this is crucial and decisive match.

All in all the two sides will no doubt be coming into the game with a mission with Royal looking forward for a repeat of their first leg win and Trinity seeking to avenge that defeat and also aiming to retain the Bradby Shield which they regained after a lapse of ten years.

The match is surely going to be a close contest as both the sides are evenly balanced and when it comes to the Bradby encounter the atmosphere and approach of the two teams is vastly different as the motive is to win the coveted Shield.

From the 78 matches that have been played so far, Trinity are ahead with 40 wins as against 36 by Royal with two matches in 1992 and 2016 ending in a tie. The biggest margin of victory is by Royal that of 83-0 which they achieved in 2002 under Zulki Hamid while Trinity has recorded the most consecutive wins of six from 1952 to 1957 and recorded the highest aggregate in the series of 126 points in 2010.