Having pulled out from honouring their inter-school rugby fixture against Zahira College last week, Trinity College slumped to defeat at the hands of arch rival Royal College who came out all guns firing to retain the Bradby Shield as they won the second leg 27-17 at the Royal Sports Complex yesterday. Although losing the first leg in Kandy 10-13, Royal finished with an aggregate of 37 to 30 scored by Trinity.
Royal scored five tries and one conversion and in reply Trinity scored one penalty try, one try, one conversion and one penalty for their 17 points.
Royal led 17-10 at half time.
It was Trinity who scored first through a gift of a try by Sachindu Wanasekera who collected an attempted drop-goal by Shan Althaf with a Royal player failing to collect the ball clean. Althaf made the conversion and Trinity led 7-0 in the second minute of the game. Royal intensified their game plan and after a series of ploys near the Trinity goal line saw Kavinash Srikanth going over the line for an unconverted try in the fifth minute.
Royal continued to play at their best and in just eight minutes scored again through Afeef Akram when their forwards worked a few ploys.
Tivan Perera made the conversion to give them 12 points.
Trinity could not make much headway even after this but they were rewarded with a penalty when the Royal line was found off-side. Shan Althaf converted from just 18 metres out to reduce the gap to two points.
Royal maintained their strength through their marauding forwards and off a line out from the 22 metres used their rolling maul to score their third try through Imthishal Naseer.
Trinity opened scoring in the second half too when one of their players who was going over the Royal line was subjected to a high tackle by Disas Pathirana in the eyes of the referee Gihan Yatawara who awarded a penalty try to Trinity.
With that Trinity equalized the scores 17-17.
Royal used their rolling maul to good effect once again and their captain Randula Senanayake went over for a try.
Royal scored again in the 52nd minute when Nabil Yahiya collected a kick ahead and dashed by the left side dummying a defender to score a good try.
The difficult conversion was missed by Sinak Shafeek but Royal finished with a ten point lead. Trinity lead the series with 39 wins while Royal have won 36 times out of the 77 encounters.