For Aabid and Thomians it is time to rejoice 

Aabid Cader and his team S. Thomas’ College officially confirmed their authority as official winners of the Singer-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Ruggerite of the Year and Most Popular Rugby Team of the Year 2017 competitions. 

Both Cader and S. Thomas’ received almost 18,000 votes and won by healthy margins of close to 13,000. 

Cader’s tally reads as 17,693 after the addition of 4,609 votes in the final and decisive week while former winner Avishka Lee of Wesley College was pushed down to third position by Sasindu Rathnaweera of Ananda College. 

The deficit between Cader and now second placed Rathnaweera is 12,750. Rathnaweera added 3,005 votes in the final week, which took his final count to 4,943, helping him to claim second place with a lead of 888 votes from Lee. 

Lee dropped down to third place after an inactive week, compared to the top two. His addition of 24 votes last week only took his tally to 4,055, which was not helpful for the former leader in any way. Another surprise of the final week was the emergence of Kasun Amarasinghe of Nalanda College. He was merely placed in the middle of the list but 3,105 votes in the final week took his final tally to 3,693, further pushing down Sumudu Rankothge and Ovin Askey, the respective skippers of Isipathana and Royal. 

In the team competition, S. Thomas’ streamed ahead to win the segment with a tally of 17,711 as Wesley, who led for a considerable number of weeks and was pushed down to second position last week, was further pushed down to third by Ananda College. S. Thomas’ leads Ananda by a clear margin of 12,723 votes. Ananda finishes off with a final tally of 4,988 while Wesley finishes at third with 4,052 votes, 936 behind. Nalanda ended up at fourth with 3,693 votes as the competitions come to an end.