Royal College made full use of the away advantage to register their third victory, by 34-7 against Zahira College in their Dialog Schools Rugby League 2024 first round fixture worked off at Maradana yesterday. The winners led 19-0 at the breather. Royal collected their points from five tries, three conversion and one penalty while Zahira responded with a converted try.
Royal stuck to a well mapped out game plan, and winning the ball from a canny move, their forwards swiftly flung out to the fleet-footed outside backs who punched a gaping hole in the Zahira defence.
Royal College Colombo asserted their position as one of the favourites to bag the league title with the win against Zahira, who had two close losses leading to this game played with a lot of heart to match the heavier Royal eights. However, the good performance from the Maradana set of forwards was to no avail as the Zahirians failed to play the territorial game to gain advantage.
On the 15th minute of play Ayyaz Shiham, the Royal College No.8 joined the line on the left flank and scored the opening try for his team. Nabil Yahiya, who had a bad game last week with the boot, made good with a difficult conversion to push the score 7-0 in favour of Reid Avenue side.
In the 27th minute Nabil Yahiya kicked to touch off a penalty that gifted to his team with the Royal eight making no mistake two minutes later with hooker, Naqeeb Mohamed touching down to push the score to 12-0 in favour of Royalists. Yahiya missed the difficult conversion.
Zahira missed several occasions to score, but due to silly handling errors and backs being out of position didn’t bother the scorers.
On the stroke of half time, Royal repeated their signature move, the rolling maul to score with Mohamed falling over for his third try. Yahiya converted a straightforward kick to the posts to extend the lead 19-0 in favour of Royal.
Ten minutes into the second half Zahira’s outside centre Abdullah Hassan made a super run to the goalpost to score almost under the post to close the gap 7-19. Mohamed Basith put over the conversion.
In the 47th minute Royal made a comeback with an easy shot to the posts with a penalty by Yahiya to extend the lead 22-7 in favour of Royal.
On the 60th minute Royal secured their bonus point with open side flanker Aman Althaf touching down under the post off a fumble by the Zahira line who was under immense pressure from the Royal’s nippy third row. Yahiya made an easy conversion to extend the lead once again 29-7. If not for the repeated errors by the Zahirians, who made fumbles at crucial moments of the game the scores would have been much closer.
In the dying minutes of the game a blistering run off a quick tap by Nabil Yahiya gave lock Yoshitha Sithumina to score on the left hand corner of the post. Yahiya missed a difficult conversion to end the game 34-7 in favour of Royal. The game was officiated by Rohan Yatawara.
