S. Thomas’ out to retain Archibald Perera Trophy

Two equally good teams S. Thomas’ College and St. Peter’s College will clash in their annual Inter-Schools Under-20 rugby encounter for the Archibald Perera Trophy at Bambalapitiya today.

Both teams had a disappointing League Tournament with several setbacks and few defeats and now they will look to restart with an improved performance in preparation for next week’s knockouts.

Even then, the Thomians will be the more fancied team to retain the Archibald Perera Trophy following some encouraging performances during the latter stages of the League Tournament.

After three successive demoralising defeats, S. Thomas’ finally managed to get their winning formula by recording back-to-back victories against St. Anthony’s College (32-25) and Kingswood College (36-8) respectively.

That also helped them to finish in fourth place of the League Tournament points table, which was not a bad effort at all, considering their early situation of the current season.

In contrast, for St. Peter’s this has been a disastrous season as they look to pick up their pieces and form a good combination as early as possible ahead of the knock-out tournament.

They had just a solitary win to their credit from their five outings and suffered a shock 10-12 defeat against Science College in their last league encounter.

The two teams last met in 2019 and on that occasion the Thomians pulled off a thrilling 20-19 victory at Mount Lavinia.