When Sri Lanka impressed in 2019 Korea Sevens
Sri Lanka will look to draw inspiration from their 2019 heroics when they start their campaign in the Asia Rugby (AR) Men’s and Women’s Sevens Series second leg in Incheon, South Korea on Saturday.
The Sri Lankan Tuskers, recovered magnificently after a disappointing start to end up with the Plate Championship where they outplayed the Philippines 21-14 in the final at the Namdong Asiad Rugby Stadium.
The Sri Lankan Women also produced an excellent performance in South Korea in 2019 as they completed a successful tournament by emerging runners-up in the Plate Championship. The Sri Lanka Men’s Team produced their best performance in this tournament when they recorded a massive 42-0 victory over Chinese Taipei in the Plate Championship semi-finals.
The Philippines, of course, reached the Plate Championship final with an exciting 21-19 win against the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Even then, the first day of this tournament turned out to be a disappointing one for the Sri Lankan Men’s Team as they lost both their Pool ‘A’ matches against China (14-17) and Japan (5-43) respectively.
However, the Tuskers bounced back into recognition on the second day of the tournament and defeated the UAE 21-17 to finish third in their group. The Plate final turned out to be a thriller and at one stage the game was slipping away from the Sri Lankan camp before Reeza Raffideen produced a last-minute try to give his side a close victory.
In fact, Raffaideen was one of the standout players for Sri Lanka at this event and ended up as the joint highest try scorer for the team along with the dashing centre three quarter Janidu Dilshan with both scoring four tries each.
Another significant performance of the 2019 Korean leg came from Sri Lanka’s reliable place-kicker Kevin Dixon who contributed a total of 20 points in the form of 10 conversions.
The dynamic full back finished as the third best kicker at this tournament, behind Ryota Kano of Japan (12 conversions) and Luc Smith of the Philippines (11 conversions).
Meanwhile, Srinath Sooriyabandara accounted for three tries while Dansha Dayan, Dinuk Amarasinghe, Nishon Perera and Sudharaka Dikkumbura scored a try each for Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lanka Women’s Team began the Korean leg in 2019 with a 10-33 defeat at the hands of Hong Kong but they came back strongly to clinch the next game against Malaysia (35-7).
On the second day of the tournament, the Sri Lanka Women lost to Japan 7-34 in their last Pool ‘C’ fixture before overcoming Singapore 26-5 in the Plate Championship semi-finals.
However, their hopes of emulating the Men’s Team in this tournament was dashed when they went down to Thailand 5-32 in the Plate final.
Sri Lanka’s Thanuja Weerakkody had a memorable tournament in Korea as she finished as the joint highest try scorer along with Honoka Tsutsumi (Japan), Riho Kurogi (Japan) and Keyi Chen (China) with all scoring five tries each.
In addition, Anusha Attanayake also had a good tournament in Korea scoring three tries while Sanjeewani de Silva had two tries to her name.