Asian Rugby Championship Division I: Confident Sri Lanka take on UAE

By Shamseer Jaleel

The Sri Lankan rugby outfit under Roshan Weeraratne will lock horns with a wounded UAE unit at Ipoh Padang in Malaysia today.

In the second game of the day hosts Malaysia will be expecting to continue their winning streak when they confront Philippines at the same venue.

Sri Lanka, who have a good history at the Asian Rugby Championship Division I, will need to come out on top against the UAE outfit. They made a number of handling errors in the opener and will hope to keep the ball secure and tighten their defence against a heavier set of UAE forwards.

For Sri Lanka both Dhanushka Ranjan and Richard Dharmapala were outstanding in the opening game. In fact Dharmapala made his debut in the longer format of the game and was unstoppable. Surprisingly he only caught the eyes of the selectors very late.

Thilina Wijesinghe too made his mark in this opening game by putting over four penalties and a try conversion plus the territorial advantage he gained gave Sri Lanka a positive edge to attack from their opponent’s half.

Sri Lanka skipper Roshan Weeraratne said:”We made a number of mistakes and want to overcome those today against the UAE. I am very happy with the performance of Thilina Wijesinghe, who made a remarkable debut for the country by putting over many penalties which kept the pressure off us. We want to win the remaining two matches and end up on top in order to gain a promotion into the Top 3 in 2018 plus give a fitting farewell to my school and club mate Fazil Marija, who will be playing his last game against Malaysia on 20 May.”

At present Sri Lanka is ranked 40th while the UAE occupies 72nd position in the World Rugby rankings. The winner of Division I of the ARC will play the third-placed team (either Hong Kong or South Korea) in a home-and-away tie to decide the 2018 Top 3 teams from the region. The referee for the game will be Charlie Brown from Singapore. The assistant referees will be Lawrence Wilkinson from Hong Kong and Abdul Hannan from Singapore.