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Sri Lankan Tuskers’ heart-breaks on the doorstep of glory

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The Sri Lanka Men’s Sevens Rugby Team
The Sri Lanka Men’s Sevens Rugby Team

The Sri Lanka Men’s Rugby Team missed out a golden opportunity of creating a piece of history as they eventually settled for fourth place at the Asia Rugby Sevens Series second leg in Incheon, South Korea on Sunday.

After an excellent performance on the first day of the tournament, Sri Lanka simply threw away their chances twice on day two with successive defeats against South Korea and the Philippines respectively.

First, they had the opportunity of making a rare appearance in the Cup Championship final after finishing second in Pool ‘A’ with seven points, just a solitary point behind the table leaders Hong Kong. This was a tremendous performance from the Sri Lankans since they had a demoralising start to their campaign while going down to the powerful Hong Kong Team 0-40 in their opening fixture.

But thereafter, Sri Lanka came out of their shell and began to display their true potential while recording back-to-back victories against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China respectively.

In fact, their success against the UAE was quite significant because the Middle East nation, unlike in the past, had turned into a major force having got down the services of a couple of foreign players.

This was well depicted later in the tournament as the UAE nearly created a major upset while forcing a thrilling 19-19 draw to their Pool ‘A’ game against the high-riding Hong Kong Team.

Inspired with the success against the strong UAE Team, Sri Lanka further underlined their supremacy by overcoming China 21-19 with a superb late burst.

In fact, in both games Sri Lanka were trailing early in the game, and it was their second half rally that always helped them to overcome most of the challenges.

But on the second day of the tournament, the Sri Lankans could not repeat that performance as they were up against two tough opponents – South Korea and the much-improved Philippines.

Even then, in both outings Sri Lanka were in with a chance of creating an upset but a couple of crucial mistakes from their part put the side under tremendous pressure.

Sri Lanka looked like they would cause a real threat to South Korea when the two teams went into half time with the scores deadlocked 14-14 in the Cup Championship semi-final.

It was almost the same scenario in the third-place playoff match against the Philippines where Sri Lanka were trailing by just a solitary try at the halfway mark of the game.

But in both instances, Sri Lanka blew away their chances by going for the wrong option and with that they also lost the momentum and simply added pressure on themselves.

Nevertheless, Skipper Srinath Sooriyabandara was the standout player for Sri Lanka with three splendid tries and two conversions in the tournament. In addition, Tarinda Ratwatte scored two tries and had three conversions for a contribution of 16 points while Anjula Hettiarachchi also made his presence felt with two tries. 

Tuesday, November 15, 2022 – 01:00











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