Zahira, DSS earn promotion to ‘A’ Division Rugby League
Two unbeaten teams Zahira College and D. S. Senanayake (DSS) College qualified to play in next years ‘A’ Division after finishing on top of their respective groups in the 2022 Inter-Schools ‘B’ Division League Rugby Tournament.
Zahira grabbed all the honours in Group-1 of the Segment ‘B’ Tournament as they finished with an impressive record of five victories from five outings and a total of 30 points inclusive of five bonus-points as well. The lads from Maradana completed their mission in the most spectacular
manner as they went on to outplay Prince of Wales College 31-6 in their last league tournament encounter.
Before that, Zahira defeated St. Aloysius’ College (29-7), Lumbini MV (34-3), Maliyadeva College (32-0) and Mahanama College (32-6) respectively. Altogether, the Zahirians collected a handsome 161 points and conceded only a total of 22 points to their opponents during their highly successful league campaign.
Maliyadeva, of course, finished second in this group with 17 points but they were nowhere challenging the leaders with just three victories to their credit.
Prince of Wales were placed third in Group-1 with a total of 14 points followed by Lumbini MV (13 points), Mahanama (11 points) and St. Aloysius’ (8 points) respectively.
Meanwhile, D. S. Senanayake turned out to be the best team in Group-2 as they made a clean sweep to obtain 30 points inclusive of five bonus-points. The most significant feature of their performances was their points aggregate where they accumulated a massive 239 points from their five games while conceding only 10 points to their opponents.
D. S. Senanayake proved to be no match to all their opponents as they trounced St. Benedict’s College (50-0), Thurstan College (24-7), Sri Sumangala College, Kandy (36-0), Ananda College (44-3) and St. Sylvester’s College (85-0).
Thurstan College, who finished second in this segment could consider themselves rather unfortunate to miss out a promotion as their solitary defeat was against the best team in this group.
Sri Sumangala College, who finished third in the table, showed a lot of promise in the beginning of the tournament but failed to clear their biggest hurdles against D. S. Senanayake and Thurstan.
St. Benedict’s (8 points), Ananda (6 points) and St. Sylvester’s (4 points) finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively in the points table.