The Sri Lanka Under 17 Girls left the island to Dubai yesterday with intentions of booking a spot for the Youth Olympic games in Buenos Aires next year as they participate in the Asian Qualifiers in Dubai.
A total of 12 teams are scheduled to participate in the qualifiers with only one team earning a place to the Youth Games. The tournament will be held in Dubai on the 29th & 30th of November. The 12 teams have been drawn in 4 groups of 3 with the top two teams making their way to the quarter finals.
This will be the second occasion where a junior girls’ team will be representing the country after the girls participated in the Under 18 Asia Sevens last year in Dubai.
The national body, Sri Lanka Rugby has had extensive selections ahead of the Olympic qualifier conducting under 18 girls’ sevens tournaments in the Western Province and in Ruwanwella. A training squad was later finalized and brought to Colombo for training under Sudath Sampath.
All players of the touring squad are from outstation areas where women’s rugby is growing with Umayanga Thathsarani set to lead the team. With the experience gained from the last tour the Sri Lankan girls will be confident of a good result.
The Sri Lankan touring party is relatively new and it has been a challenge for the coach however coach Sudath Sampath expects the team to make good progress, “We are heading into this tournament with intentions of winning, however, our first two games are against the Philippines ad Hong Kong so we will first focus on them without getting ahead of ourselves”
He went on to express his elation about the speed in which girls’ rugby is being developed in the island, “We are very happy with the rapid progress, this will only help us in the future with women’s rugby in the Sri Lanka as the juniors will progress to that level one day”
Fixtures:
29th November 2017 – Sri Lanka vs Philippines 2.14 p.m. (SL time GMT 5.30+)
29th November 2017 – Sri Lanka vs Hong Kong 6.46 p.m. (SL time GMT 5.30+)
