Royal College hockey team to embark on historic tour to Australia

Royal College, the undisputed national schools champions, will tour Canberra, Australia from 23 March to 1 April after receiving an invitation from Australian Hockey ACT through the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canberra. 

After a highly competitive tournament at the Astro hockey turf, the Under-18 team in 2016 went on to win the gold medal and stamped its hockey supremacy.

The history of this particular team goes back to 2008 and these lads have been playing beside each other for more than a decade beginning from the Under-9 team. A few of the team’s past achievements include emerging Under-9 and Under-11 Colombo schools champions and Under-13 and Under-15 Colombo schools runners-up. 

Certis Lanka Group Joint Managing Director/CEO Vipul Hettige presenting the sponsorship cheque to Royal College Principal B. A. Abeyratne. Also present are master-in-charge Athula Senanayake, Royal College coach Rohan Dissanayake and Manager Human Resources and Training at Certis Lanka, Captain Pasindu Charuka and Vice Captain Manjitha de Silva

At the annual encounters, Royal College played against four popular schools, with the team going on to retain all four trophies against Wesley College (Dudley K.G. De Silva Memorial Shield), Kingswood College (Lennie De Silva Memorial Trophy), Trinity College (J.C.A. Corea Memorial Trophy) and against archrivals S. Thomas’ College (Orville Abeynaike Trophy). 

The game of hockey was introduced to Royal in 1955 under the guidance of Lennie De Silva, a past Kingswoodian. After  facing many obstacles and having won and lost many a tournament, the golden era of Royal College hockey commenced in 1991 when a bunch of loyal old boys of the school formed the Royal College Hockey Club to assist in developing the sport at Royal. 

This new development changed the destiny of Royal College hockey and paved the way for astounding performances by Royal College’s stickers, who have gone on to consistently win a large number of titles over the last two decades. 

During this period they won the National Schools Games title four times, which speaks volumes for their dominance. The present coach of Royal College Rohan Dissanayake, who has been serving in this capacity since 1991, has been instrumental in the successes of the school’s hockey teams. The Royal College Hockey Club, which is celebrating its 26th year of existence, has strived to maintain standards of professionalism by organising events such as the Blue and Gold Hockey 7’s, deemed Sri Lanka’s premier hockey tournament.

Royal College hockey teams have undertaken many foreign tours in the recent past with the sole intention of giving the players much needed international exposure and this has paid dividends, with the hockey played by the stickers of Royal College being brilliant and very much above the rest of the competition. Their style of play has been the cynosure of all eyes.

The team will leave for Canberra on 23 March and will return to the island on 1 April.

While on tour they will play five matches all on the latest blue astro turfs with one match scheduled to be played under lights. Another noteworthy feature of the tour is they will attend a training program led by Australia’s Under-21 coach Ben Bishop, who has also been a member of the coaching staff of the Olympic gold medal-winning Australian team.