After a thrilling three days of day and night Hockey, the Sri Lanka Air Force SC and Sri Lanka Army SC made their way to the finals of the 58th Senior Nationals Championship concluded yesterday, under lights at the Colombo Astro Hockey Turf.
Both the teams were well prepared to battle for the Championship after winning the group matches from Thursday to Saturday. Even though yesterday’s weather was not promising, the referee blew the whistle and Army SC started off the match on a gloomy and drizzling condition.
Army SC showed an impressive game of hockey where they had a high-quality game plan to beat the mighty airmen. Just with five minutes in to the game clock, the referee blew off for a penalty stroke for Army SC for holding on to the ball by the Air Force goalkeeper. D. P. Ranasinghe made no mistake in converting the bonus point for his team. (Army 01 – AF 00).
Just after that Army was awarded two penalty corners one after the other due to a mistake of the Air Force fullback, but they were not successful in converting any into goals. As a result of that the Air Force made their way to attack the powerful soldiers but no goals were scored by the airmen and the scoreboard read 01 – 00 in favor of Army at the breather.
The second half of the game was started off by Army after the break and the weather started turning better making it easy for the boys who had to engage in more haul ups than passes at the beginning of the match.
Army who were always engaged according to their game plan did not let Air Force grab the ball. However the right extreme of Army missed a typical goal from his corner and it made the airmen crash the soldiers and run riot to be awarded by a penalty corner, but they failed with the conversion.
For some on-field violence the Army SC No. 12, S. Anuradha was yellow carded while No. 17 of Air Force SC, Dissanayaka was red carded and asked to sit out. But the Army made no mistakes after that and was able to grab another penalty for their incredible playing which however they failed to convert it again.
No. 8 of Army SC, C. Keerthikumara was given a green card for his crucial playing of attacking a player from Air Force SC and Air Force started attacking all of a sudden and was awarded by a bonus point: a penalty stroke for the unintelligent playing of Army SC goalkeeper and No. 22 of Air Force SC, Karunarathna made no mistakes with the conversion and the scoreboard read one all just before the referee called off the match.
After the decision made by the third umpire and according to the rules and regulations, both the teams were given an extra time of 10 minutes each to battle again for the 58th Senior Nationals Championship. Even though the almighty soldiers were awarded by a penalty at the extra time, their centre-forward was unable to convert it into a goal and the match ended up with the Soldiers and the Airmen Joint-Champions of the 58th Senior National Hockey Championship 2014.
In the 03rd and 04th play off, Mercantile SC beats Navy SC and it was remarkable to witness that it was the first time in Sri Lanka that Hockey has been played in under lights.
