Defending Clifford Cup champions and table leaders of the ongoing Nippon Paint Rugby League, CR and FC, will be out to maintain their winning streak against Havelocks Sports Club in the SLR Rugby League Super round curtain raiser at Havelock Park on Friday.
After some scintillating performance amidst a packed stadium in Nittawela, where they rewrote history by breaking a 26-year hoodoo, the Longden Place lads will be out to maintain their superiority against a fancied Park club team who at the outset looked second to none but gradually failed to maintain their winning streak and ended up fourth on the points table at the end of the seventh week fixture.
CR is a team which dominated proceedings from their first game of the season and kept the momentum going until the last fixture against Kandy, which subsequently brought them to the top of the League. This fixture is going to be a unique one for both sides and CR will have to
strive hard to keep their unbeaten record. When both teams met on the last occasion few weeks back, the Red jerseyed men secured a comfortable 25-10 win after trailing at the breather.
A swashbuckling second half rally saw the Park Club run out of ideas to maintain the onslaught, while CR Skipper Suhiru Anthony played a pivotal role in managing his charges and maintained
their consistency throughout the game.
CR will be sans one of their key players Gamunu Chetiya who is nursing an injiry after the Kandy game, and Chatura Seneviratne will be inducted to occupy his position. The rest of the team will remain the same which took on Kandy.
“From now the tournament is going to be heated up as all teams are vying for the Cup. We know the other three teams will be equally good as us from now. But as a unit our boys are pretty determined and pumped up to continue their good form to maintain the all-important winning habit. Even though we are playing at their venue, we still are very optimistic of putting up a good performance as we beat them last season at the same venue,” said Dushanth Lewke the CR head coach.
Havies on the other hand failed to live up to expectations. They started the season with a bang but with the progress of the tournament they lost that all important consistency in finishing the game in their favour. Nevertheless, this game is going to be a crucial one for skipper Azmir Fajudeen and his boys who are expected to put up a much-improved performance after a few weeks break where they would have ironed out their shortcoming. They too are affected with few injury issues which they are likely to assess today.
“We are facing few injury issues to some key players which might be known today. As a team we are working hard to bounce back to winning ways with a much-improved performance,” said Danushka Boteju, the assistant coach of Havelocks.
