They say some victories are born on the field. But this one was born in the dark. In silence. In doubt. This one was written in the quiet hours, behind closed doors, in hospitals, in locker rooms, in prayer. This was not a season. This was a saga. A rebirth. A reckoning. It wasn’t just about rugby. It was about a legacy clawing its way back to the surface after being buried alive for thirty-eight long, bitter years.
I write this with tears falling, and yet they are nothing compared to what fifty young warriors shed on muddy fields and broken training tracks. I weep, not out of sadness, but out of awe. Out of sheer gratitude. Because what this Trinity College team gave us in 2025 was more than a league title. It was a resurrection. A reminder. That greatness, no matter how far it falls, never truly dies. It just waits for the right generation to answer the call.
They answered.
It is out there now, louder than ever. Trinity College had not won a league title since 1987. Thirty-eight years. For some, that’s a myth whispered down corridors. For others, like myself, it’s more than a drought. It’s a shadow that grew larger with every passing year. The name “Trinity” had once commanded reverence, fear, respect, but by the time this generation arrived, that name had become a question mark. What happened to the Lions?
We came close. Heartbreakingly close in 2012, when under the warrior leadership of Kaneel Seneviratne, Trinity swept through the season, only to be robbed of glory in a boardroom. A ruling nullified matches against Vidyartha, erasing 62 scored points and with them, our championship. Isipathana were named winners. Trinity was left with scars. It was theft. Legalised, technical, clinical theft. The wound never healed. It festered. Until now.
- Photos – Trinity College vs St. Peter’s College | Dialog Schools Rugby League 2025 – Week 10
- Trinity win the League, St. Peter’s win the hearts
This time, no such mistake was going to happen. This team, they would not allow it. And if anyone dared try, they would have had to fight Trinity on every front. Because for once, we were ready. Not just talented, prepared. Not just hopeful but engineered. This wasn’t a team. It was a movement.
The story didn’t start in a training ground or on a whiteboard. It started in October 2022, when Nilantha Rathnayake a member of the unbeaten ‘87 side, stepped in as President of the Trinity College Rugby Scrummage. He was no nostalgic old boy. He was a doer. A national cricketer. A CEO. A man who had tasted both glory and hardship, and returned not to reminisce but to rebuild. He understood what had been lost. And more importantly, he knew how to find it again.
He built a team that wasn’t about names but purpose. BNR Fernando, the ice-veined 2005 Bradby winning captain, brought sharp planning and an unshakeable calm. Alongside him came Murad Ramzeen, a 2011 Knockout Champion. Young, fiercely intelligent, unafraid of confrontation. Together, they rewired the system. This was not a ceremonial committee of old boys with tea and theories. This was a strike force.
But it didn’t stop there. This wasn’t a top-heavy tree — it was a network, woven across.
Subcommittees were activated like limbs of a larger beast, volunteers who worked in the shadows, unpaid and often unnoticed. They didn’t need attention. They had one mission, to bring Trinity back. No politics. No posturing. Just silent, stubborn work.
But even the fiercest dreamers need permission to build. And that came from the school itself. Trinity College, under the unwavering vision of Rev. Fr. Araliya Jayasundara, stood tall behind this renaissance. He wasn’t a figurehead. He was a protector. A torchbearer. A Principal who bled rugby through silence and service. Director of Sports Gihan Samarasekara became a soldier of the movement. Logistics. Transport. Analysis. Filming. Scheduling. He stepped so far outside his role that he became indispensable. Together, they lit the flame.
Now came the boots-on-the-ground team. The coaching staff. Fazil Marija was named head coach. A legend on the pitch. A maestro of Sri Lankan rugby. But he had never coached a school side. The knives came out immediately. The whispers began. “What are they thinking?” “Where’s the overseas coach?” “This is too risky.” But the Scrummage didn’t flinch. Fazil didn’t need to explain himself. He came to work.
Alongside him, the coaching team took shape. Buddhika Thalagampola, a fierce mind for forwards. Tharaka Algama on strength and conditioning, a man of science, discipline, detail. Tarinda Ratwatte. the kicking whisperer. A former Lion himself, quiet but cutting.
With the backroom built, the culture shifted. The year was 2023. Enter captain Attab Manzil and vice-captain Chamendra Dhanapala. No politics. No seniority games. Just hunger. Just honesty. A team built on merit. Inclusion. Boys like Shan Althaf and Nisith Kumarasinghe were just fifteen, but they were protected, coached, and thrown into the fire. Talent was the only passport. And Attab, a boxer by trade and soul, tore his knee weeks before the season. Everyone assumed he was done.
He wasn’t.
He trained through agony. He led through pain. He played because he knew something bigger was happening. That year, Trinity lifted the Cannon de Saram Shield and won the Bradby first leg at Pallekele. The scoreboard didn’t matter. What mattered was the system was working. The bones were knitting back together.
But 2024 was waiting.
Buddhika left midway, the entire plan could’ve collapsed. It was seen as a disruption. Instead, it became a gift. Enter Viraj Prashantha, a league-winning forward, national cap, and tactician. He would turn this team from hopefuls into soldiers. With him, the trenches deepened. Kapila Silva stepped in as team manager — the calmest presence off the field, a man who had won everything there was to win at Kandy SC. And the final piece. Mr. Kanchana Galagoda. Master-in-Charge. The ultimate spiritual guide. Decades of experience, and the quiet ability to stabilise storms.
It started with doubts. Again. Critics were louder than ever. The team was still too young. Another year of whispers, doubts, and the ever-lurking old boys who never believed. But something was different now. Something had taken root. and then came tragedy. A teammate. A brother. Shabeer Ahmed, gone. Just like that. The sort of loss that derails entire seasons. Entire teams. But this Trinity team? They did not fall apart. They closed ranks. And they played for Shabeer. But instead of collapsing, the team pulled tighter. “We play for Shabeer” became the rallying cry.
Then came the injuries. The heartbreaks. The DS loss, controversial and humiliating. The boys realised: losing is no longer acceptable. A silent vow was made at Havelock Park. Win the Bradby. No shortcuts.
The heartbreaks didn’t stop. Trinity was robbed against Isipathana.
And then, the cruellest cut — captain Anuhas Kodithuwakku went down. Season-ending. The stretcher rolled out. His heart broke before the medics even reached him. Everyone tried to comfort him. But he already knew. He was done. Yet the team wasn’t. They rallied.
But his tears became the team’s thunder. The torch passed. Thisanga Dissanayake, named captain along with vice-captain Ravin Illangarathna and the leadership group which was stacked. Senula Alexander, Yasiru Ariyawansa, Dehan Watagoda, Rushen Bandaranayake, Menura Wijekoon, Udeesha Rathnayake, Yevan Hulangamua, and that core trio — Usmaan, Shan, Nisith.
And then came the Bradby.
Trinity needed a miracle. They were trailing. Final minute. Penalty — 52 meters out. The air held its breath. Shan Althaf stepped up. And what followed wasn’t luck. It was the product of unseen kicks in the dark after training. He struck it clean. It sailed through the uprights like destiny itself was watching. The Bradby was ours. After a decade. A whole decade.
Still, the fight wasn’t done.
2025 arrived with fresh problems. Ten players gone from the starting XV. Six forwards. Four backs. Gone. But no panic. Fazil and his team didn’t blink. They had built a system, not a side. In came Usmaan Shafraz as captain. Shan and Nisith took vice captaincy. The season began.
St. Anthony’s — a statement win. Thurstan, Sri Sumangala, Vidyartha — dismantled. But the coaches didn’t let complacency creep in. They pushed. Hard. St. Joseph’s — tough, gritty, wet. But Trinity didn’t buckle. They advanced. And then came the chess match: Royal College.
Trinity executed to perfection. Royal couldn’t find their rhythm. Trinity outplayed them. Outthought them. The league table showed something that hadn’t happened in decades: Trinity on top.
But the second round — that’s where dreams go to die.
The ghosts of 2012. The stumbles of 2017. The collapses of 2019. Fazil, Viraj and Kaplia knew them all. They were not going to let history repeat.
The second round — the usual graveyard. Trinity had been here before. The second round is where dreams go to die. The coaches remembered. They made a plan. No complacency. Then came the trophy game against S. Thomas’. The venue: Big Club Grounds. The same pitch that had broken bones in the past. Trinity had now travelled to Colombo seven times in three months. Exhausted. But unbroken. They came. They saw. They conquered. And they brought the Cannon de Saram Shield back again. Three home games to glory. Isipathana first. A revenge match. Trinity is clinical. Fast, slick, ruthless. The highest points ever scored against Pathana. Pallakele is shaking. the most points scored against Pathana ever. The old record? Ours. From 2008. That year ended in heartbreak. This one wouldn’t.
One final mountain: Wesley College. Winner takes all. At half-time, Trinity trailed. 7–5. First time all year. The crowd was tense. The boys were quiet. But champions respond. And Trinity roared back. Tries. A crucial penalty. Then a drop goal from Shan that may as well have been written in scripture. Final whistle. Victory.
But confusion reigned. Did we get the bonus point? Had we done enough?
The players began their warm down. Quiet. Hopeful. Nervous. And then, Fazil walked across the pitch, looked them in the eyes, and said, “We are the league champions.”
The sound that followed shook the very roots of Pallekele.
Tears. Screams. Hugs. Boys collapsed into each other. Old boys lifted one another. Fr. Araliya stood still a tear rolls out. Then he walked to the team. His face was wet. His voice cracked. “Thank you, boys,” he whispered. No speech. Just soul.
The Dialog Schools Rugby League Trophy was hoisted high. In their house. In front of their people. On their mountain.
I wasn’t there to call it live. But I write this with another tear falling now from far far away with memories spending plenty of good times with these boys. Another one just fell as I watched Usmaan lift that trophy.
And in the end, there is only gratitude—gratitude for the boys who pulled the Red, Gold, and Blue over their shoulders, who carried it like armour, who bled and sweated and refused to let the weight of thirty-eight years bend their backs. On August 10th, 2025, the Chapel Bell will ring, and its voice will be unlike any that came before. It will not mark the passing of time, nor call boys to prayer—it will roar for every Lion who has waited thirty-eight long years to hear it speak of victory again. Its sound will roll through the hills, rattle the glass in the classrooms, and race along every corridor of Trinity’s proud walls, as if the very building itself were exhaling decades of longing.
The coaches who shaped them, who pored over game tapes deep into the night, who turned raw promise into something unbreakable, and who believed when belief itself felt like a fragile thing.
- Head Coach – Fazil Marija
- Forwards Coach – Viraj Prashantha
- S&C Coach – Tharaka Algama
- Manager – Kapila Silva
- MIC – Kanchana Galagoda
- Team Doctor – Dr. Chaminda Gunathilake
- Asst Coaches – Lasitha Attanagoda, Sanushka Abeywickrama, Aruna Perera, Dhanushka Ranjan, Chamika Perera, Sanjeewa Perera, Senula Alexander, Thisanga Dissanayake, Chamath Kalansooriya,
Squad – Usmaan Shafraz, Shan Althaf, Nisith Kumarasinghe, Rithika Weragama, Waqidh Ali, Seth Wickramanayake, Manusha Silva, Akash Fernando, Ramindu Wanasinghe, Dimath Ambepitiya, Kevin Weerakoon, Onija Kodithuwakku, Hamza Abdeen, Vihanga Indhusara, Ravishka Dissanayake, Shryan Satheeshkumar, Sadeesha Weerawansa, Dishal Thomas, Tevin Udukumbura, Maleesha Jayaneth, Ishara Premachandra, Ravindu Jayasinghe, Mukshidh Siyam, Ridma Nimneth, Ammar Manzil, Abdul Malik, Bilal Nazeer, Deemal Thilakarathne, Amhar Faizal, Naheel Jayah, Mindinu Dissanayake, Minula Yaddehige, Mohammed Asri, Murad Raizan, Udan Wijekoon, Misala Perera, Avishka Jayasekara, Evin Jayasena, Achintha Jayasena, Heshan Kumarawansa
There are stories I haven’t told. Moments in between. But the journey? It continues…
This was no ordinary crown. It was won in the hardest of seasons, in a league that has grown sharper, faster, and more unforgiving than any in recent memory. Every try was hard-earned, every tackle a test, every victory wrestled from opponents who would have broken lesser sides.
Trinity is back.
The crown is home.
