Java Lane Sports Club clinch Premier League Title

Bernard PERERA

Java Lane Sports Club from Slave Island, one of the oldest soccer playing clubs in the City maintained its supremacy winning the CEAT Premier League Title yesterday at their home grounds beating Kalutara Park SC three goals to one.

With this victory Java Lane SC became the holders of the CEAT Trophy and also received a cash award of Rs. 300,000 while runners up Park SC received the runners up Trophy and Rs. 200,000.

The got off to a start at 3.30 p.m. and the teams played good soccer right throughout 90 minutes. The Slave Island club got off to an early lead in the tenth minutes through the goal scored by A.A. Gnanasegaran. With just four minutelater they went further ahead when M. Rilwan Nadeer found the net.

The first session was dominated by the Slave Island boys but Kalutara team too made many inroads to opponents territory but failed to take advantage to score with those moves. The session ended with Java Lane in the lead 2-0.

After the turn around the Kalutara team got their act together and reduced the lead in only 3 minutes into the session.

The game completely changed from there onwards with Java Lane SC trying to add to their tally while defending in a very effective manner. The defenders played their hearts out to stop the Kalutara team from scoring.

Kalutara lads also did extremely well to hold their fort while safeguarding their territory. Slave Island team’s two players where warned by the referee B.M.S. Basnayake while he had to pull out the card only once on Kalutara team. Slave Island Club received seven corners but could not make them into scoring opportunities.

Referee B.M.S. Basnayake had to leave the field due to an injury and the stand-by referee N.S.M.H. Roomy controlled the game for nearly 30 minutes. Java Lane SC’s substitute H.N.M. Razeek who came in for T.R. Junaideen scored the third goal 18 minutes into the second half.

There was no scoring by both teams after that and the team from Colombo sealed their victory.

Asiri Lamahewa the highest goal getter for the Slave Island Club with seven goals during the season was declared as the man of the final yesterday. Though he failed to score in yesterday’s match he played an intelligent game.

Chief executive officer CEAT Sri Lanka Tyres Ltd. Randeep Narang was the Chief Guest and gave away the awards.