Joes down Thomians as Plate savouring begins

St. Joseph’s College centre Shaveen de Soyza dives over for a try beating the Thomian defence (Pic: Varuna Wanniarachchi)

By M. Shamil Amit

St Joseph’s College cleared the first hurdle in the race for the Dialog Schools Plate title when they prevailed with a comfortable 29 points to 15 win over S. Thomas’ College in the match played at Longdon Place yesterday.

The Josephians also in the process succeeded in retaining the Lady Jayatileke Shield which the two sides battled for apart from the tournament match.

St Joseph’s having taken a slender four point lead (19-15) and the breather made up their points through three goals, a try and a penalty to a goal, a try and a penalty scored by S. Thomas’. St Joseph’s made the first scoring in the first session of play which was in the sixth minute with their flanker sizzling away for a try and fly half Adriyano Candappa booting over the conversion.

But the Thomians struck back two minutes later with hooker Aaman Imran going over for a try but the conversion was kicked astray. With the two sides sharing honours the Josephians surged ahead in the ninth minute with centre Shaveen de Soyza going over for an unconverted try.

From there on the Josephians dominated proceedings and gave the Thomians some torrid moments and they succeeded to surge ahead in the 20th minute from a try scored by Number Eight Inosh de Silva with Adriyano Candappa making no mistake with the conversion to make them lead 19-5. The Thomians undeterred came back and succeeded to breach the Joes’ defense which ended in their second rower going over for a try in the 25th minute and with their fullback adding the extra points had them decrease the deficit by seven points. In the battle for the ball the Thomians were awarded a penalty a minute away from the short whistle for an infringement which Mayanka Dias booted over.

On resumption the two sides though sharing honours failed to take advantage of increasing the score and it took a good 23 minutes for the scoring to be done which was by the Joes with second rower Sathira Gunatilleke doing the scoring and Adriyano Candappa adding the extra points.

It was a session of scoring opportunities missed by both sides and the Joes managed to increase their lead with Adriyano Candappa booting over a penalty in the 30th minute.

The Thomians were unable to make any headway in this session as they failed to do any scoring and with no scoring done in the last five minutes the Joes ended winners.

Referee - Kelum Sandaruwan