The 20th annual Royal-Thomian hockey encounter for the Orville Abeynaike Memorial trophy ended in a scoreless draw at the Astro Turf in Colombo on Thursday after the match was keenly contested by both teams and played into extra time.
Royal College skipper Sachithra Malshan and his counterpart Rahal Rambukpotha from S.Thomas’ College accepted the trophy as joint winners but the Thomians will retain the trophy as they won it last year.
So far the Thomians have won the encounter on nine occasions while Royal have won six matches with the rest ending in draws.
In the under-16 encounter S.Thomas’ won 1-0 and the solitary goal was scored by KDK Perera for the Thomians.
The over-35 game ended in a 1-1 draw with Tivanka Wijeratne scoring off a pass from Amitha Abeynaike for the Thomians while Naditha Kudagama scored for Royal.
In the under-35 encounter Royal got the better of S.Thomas’ by beating them 2-0 with S.Kuthubdeen scoring both goals for the Royal.
The Orville Abeynaike Trophy was donated by his family. He was a legend who had the distinction of playing cricket for the Thomians in 1940 and 1941 and joined the staff of S.Thomas’ College in 1959 before being elevated to sub Warden of the school.
He was also the team’s cricket coach and master in charge of both cricket and hockey for almost two decades when the school produced some of the most outstanding sportsmen.
National Development Bank (NDB) was the main sponsor of this encounter.
The encounter was refereed by M.J.M.Naushad – International umpire with Akalanka Ishan while Sathis Kumar was the third umpire.