Police Sports Club held their nerves together and defended well to pull off a thrilling one point win over Hambantota Sharks in the Dialog Rugby League match played at Police Park in Colombo yesterday.
Police scored 22 points to register the victory. They scored their points through two goals, one unconverted try and a penalty while Sharks obtained their points scoring a goal, unconverted try, two drop goals and a penalty.
Dev Anand drew first blood when Sharks put the first points on the board with a drop goal. Police after a while fought back to level the score when Lahiru Gurusinghe’s boot went in the right direction for a successful penalty.
Sharks once again came in front when Anand once again was successful with a drop goal. The score read 6-3 in favour of Sharks at that time.
Then came the back-to-back tries from Police with the first try coming through Thanuja Senaviratne. Senaviratne ran good ten metres to touch down. Gurusinghe added the extra points as the scores read 10-6. Then one of Police’s foreign players Lapana Makarlu got into act scoring a try which was converted by Gurusinghe once again. The scores read 17-6 in favour of Police at the halfway mark.
In the second half, Sharks’ Failanga Afmasage came into the field and turned things around in favour of the Sharks. Failanga kicked well, defended and ran well in the second half. After both teams fighting for the position, Sharks won a line-out and Failanga ran hard through the Police defence to touch down under the post. Anand converted the try into a goal as the scores read 17-13 in favour of Police.
Sharks then came up with another try when Salinda Ekanayake touched down left side of the post. Anand was unsuccessful with conversion as Sharks led by 18-17.
Police was desperate for a scoring opportunity and they found it through a contribution made by the Police forwards as Udara Suripperuma touched near the right side flag. Gurusinghe failed to add the extra points as the scores turned out to be 22-18 in favour of Police. In the dying stages of the game, Russell Curt, another foreign player for Sharks, did well to score through a penalty as the scores were 22-21 in favour of Police, that was at the long whistle.
