Aabid dethrones Lee and lifts his school S. Thomas’

Singer-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Ruggerite of the Year 2017

It looked like Avishka Lee and his team Wesley College were going to have things easy but with two more weeks to go there has been an interception and it is a big and costly one for Lee and Wesley. 

As predicted last week, Aabid Cader dethroned Lee in a big way and so did his team S. Thomas’ College, who pushed down Wesley by a large margin. This makes Cader and S. Thomas’ the new rulers of the Singer-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Ruggerite of the Year and Most Popular Rugby Team of Year 2017 competitions which reached their 13th week. 

Cader, who was trailing Lee by 801 votes, is incidentally leading this week with 4,993 votes, a margin which will be quite hard to overcome given his current progress and the fact that there are only two weeks remaining. 

Lee’s followers would have felt that he would have a cakewalk and must be presently feeling a sense of total astonishment. Lee added 375 to his tally, which now reads 3,715, but nothing is over until it’s really over and the remaining two weeks are anticipated to hold several surprises. 

Behind Lee comes Sasindu Rathnaweera of Ananda College, who is making steady progress. Last week he added 467 votes to take his tally to take it to 1,708 and by the looks of it he may produce a surprise or two in the remaining few weeks. 

In the team competition, S. Thomas’ dislodged Wesley by a large margin and take the lead at 8,725 votes. Wesley slipped to second place while Ananda remains in third ahead of Isipathana and Royal, who are placed fourth and fifth respectively.  The competitions, which enable readers to vote for their most preferred school rugby player of the ongoing Singer Schools Division I Rugby League Championship 2017, will run until 30 July. 

From 23 April, the Sunday Times, along with Wijeya Newspapers publications - Daily Mirror, Daily Lankadeepa and Ada - will publish coupons for 15 continuous weeks, numbered for each week from 1 to 15 with the deadline set on Thursday of each week. The names of players shown in the list are those with 30 or more votes.