Royal Thomian hockey encounter for the Orville Abeynaike Trophy

The annual Royal-Thomian hockey encounter will be played for the Orville Abeynaike Memorial Trophy on Saturday, 29 October, commencing at 4.30 p.m. at the Astro turf in Colombo 7. 

The first XI encounter will commence at 6.30 p.m. and be played under floodlights. It will be the first time a school hockey encounter will be played under lights.

It will be the 17th occasion that this match will be played for this trophy. The Thomians have won seven encounters while the Royalist have won on six occasion, with three encounters ending in draws. Royal College are the current holders of the trophy as they defeated the Thomians 2-1 last year. 

Royal will be led by Sajana De Soysa and the Thomians by Javindu Peiris. It will be an entertaining game of hockey as the Royalists intend to retain the trophy while the Thomians will do their utmost to bring back silverware to Mount Lavinia. This year the two schools have introduced an Under-15 encounter to promote hockey at the junior level.

The first XI trophy is played in memory of the late Orville Abeynaike, who represented S. Thomas’ both in hockey and cricket in 1941. He coached the Thomian hockey team for over two decades and ended his career as the school’s Sub Warden after serving his alma mater for 33 years.

The Old Boys match will be played for the Nihal Nilaweera Trophy at 5.30 p.m. at the same venue. The Royalists beat the Thomians 1-0 last year and are the current holders of the trophy.

The Chief Guest for the match is Gamini Marapona. He is an Old Boy of S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia and captained the first XI hockey team in 1960 and also represented the school in cricket and fives. He was a Head Prefect in 1961 and won the Victoria Gold medal for ‘Best All-round’ student.