Kandy held to 13-all draw by CH
 

by Lal Gunesekera

The screws were tightened on the defending champions Kandy Sports Club and they nearly met their waterloo. However, they just managed to cling on to a 13-all draw against CH & FC in their Caltex (Tier 'A') League Rugby Championship match at Maitland Crescent yesterday after CH led 10-3 at the breather.

It looked as if Kandy would have sealed victory after their right winger Sanjeewa Jayasinghe dumped two tries within the space of eight minutes in the second session to get into a 13-10 draw. However, they would have not expected former Vidyartha and Trinity player, Saliya Kumara, turning out for CH to make no mistake with a 40-metre penalty right with about eight minutes remaining. He made the equaliser and CH did very well to hold the champions to a draw.

The CH forwards played a much better game than their opposite numbers. They played a hard game and held the Kandy "eight". The Maitland Crescent club had their chances of scoring at least thrice, but faulty handling put paid to their chances. This was a good game, considering that they lost to CR last week.

Kandy on the other hand had a poor game.

As stated earlier, their forwards did not play well and as a result the outsides did not get good ball to run. However, their two wingers Chamara Withanage and Sanjeewa Jayasinghe made some beautiful runs with the latter scoring twice in quick succession. The penalty for Kandy was put over by Nalaka Weerakoddy who had a poor game.

CH scored through a penalty try converted by Saliya Kumara, who also put over two vital penalties though missing three attempts earlier.

Kandy's Danushka Perera and CH's Milinda Jayasinghe were sent into Sin Bin by referee Pradeep Fernando.