After a less than a year of its establishment, the Western Province Hockey Association remarkably concluded their first Western Province Hockey Tournament which took place from 01st to 04th March and worked off at two venues in Colombo, Sirimavo Bandaranaike Vidyalaya grounds and the Colombo Astro Turf.
The finals of both the Girls and Boys matches amazed the past hockey players to witness how well hockey in Colombo has improved in so many different and innovative ways. The team kits, the accessories, the rules and regulations and also to see how committed and well the teams performed in such contexts.
Musaeus College vs Ladies’ College
In the girls’ Under 19 category, Colombo’s most famous schools of Musaeus College and Ladies’ College battled for the supreme title. Even though the teams look small in size they furnished a good game of hockey yesterday evening. The Musaeite Thurani Ranathunga drew their first blood by scoring an impressive goal to a stunned opponent.
For Ladies’ supporters the game did not live up to the expectations as the whole game went scoreless for them. Even though the team looked sound, Musaeus College was far more aggressive with their playing style. Their attack perseverance paid off as, Thesmi Gunasekara scored the second goal for her team which totaled the first half two points to nil.
In the second half of the game, the Musaeus stickers took the game to the Ladies. A number of great passes and tactics were made, with their own coach pulling some stops. They scored the third goal by the hands of Lithma Kumaradasa. The team then knew that they were to be crowned as the champions of the Western Province Hockey Tournament. Having their hopes running high they were shaken when the Ladies’ stickers suddenly made their way to the attacking lines and end up receiving a penalty corner.
However, it was not a day for the Ladies team as they received too many penalties one after the other but ended up scoring nothing. The major weakness that made them scoreless is the way they took on the penalties with the same style, which made the Museaites spot the key players and roofed their goal post and ended up scoring their last goal which was by Shinaya Peiris to take the championship.
Royal College vs. D.S. Senanayake College
The boys’ final saw the hockey fraternity witnesses a far speedier game than the girls’ where you could have seen the speedsters of both the colleges combatting for the title. Five minutes after the game kicked off, Royal College strikingly drew their first blood to the utter disappointment of the DSSC by the playmaker Thineth Karunaratne. He was just amazing yesterday, which also won an award of most outstanding player.
This game saw the most number of players sin-binned out of the entire tournament and the history of Hockey in Colombo. Many silly mistakes and arguments with the referees saw the players being repeatedly penalized. After DSSC’s great attempt of attacking, they received a penalty which was nicely converted by their playmaker Abdul Rahuman.
As the aforesaid two green cards were given to the same team mates, Nisal Vindula and Adeesha Perera one after the other, the coach grew disapproving of the referees decisions as well. The DSSC team was awarded with a penalty stroke for an unhealthy move made by a Royal sticker on their D top. And this was Abdul’s time to show off his colours after being sin-binned for quite a time. He tactically used great skills to convert the penalty stroke, when the goal keeper from Royal was hapless to cover his crib and the scoreboard read one all at the breather.
In the second half Royal stickers’ showed panic when the DSSC kept on attacking the defenders and ended up receiving two penalties but none were converted. After being tired of being at the receiving end of some attacking, the Roylists used their own way of finding the D top and end up converting a penalty into a goal by K. Malith. They looked as if they read their coach’s mind replicating the aggression, Thineth Karunaratne with his companion Shaheer Bari scored his second goal by the right corner after a great struggle.
Shaheer Bari, the skipper of Royal was outstanding together with their full back Malithra Yoshan. DSSC’s time of scoring decreased in the second half when their luck flew away even after they received one or two penalties. Royal’s Malithra showed excessive skill by covering a goal which almost went inside the goal post.
Imaadh Doole from Royal College, scored a remarkable goal to wind up the last few minutes and the outstanding stickers from Royal College grabbed the Under 19 Boys Western Province Hockey Championship 2015.
