Kingswood College, Kandy takes pride for being the first school to play rugby, when they were known as Kandy Boys High School and has a proud rugby history. It was a product of Trinity College Kandy L E. Blaze who introduced rugby in 1891 to Kingswood. The first matches were played on 27th November and 8th of December 1891 between the students and the staff. The first inter-school rugger match was between Kingswood College and Trinity College on 11th of August 1906 at the Bogambara grounds and it resulted in an exciting 6-6- draw However, Kingswoodains gave up the game after a few years when a player died after being injured off a kick. There was no rugby till 1968, where they came out with an under 17 team, due to the efforts of their great teachers Winston Hoole who was the POG at that time. 1968 and 1969 Under 17 captains were Deepal Jayasinghe/ M.A.S. Ismail 1968, Kamal Maimon /W..W. Jayasekara 1969
Since 1980,Kingswood has been doing well in rugby and won the Tyrell Muttiah trophy in the same year emerged the Schools ‘B’ division champions. That was the start of their uplift and the man who guided them was Z.M. Zarook. Then in 1981,Kingswood were promoted to the ‘A’ division and ended up fourth in the Gratien Cup competition.
In 1987, they had an excellent season, winning nine out of ten matches and also entered the R. Premadasa Knock-out tournament and went down to Trinity College by 11 points to 6 after leading 5-3 at lemons.
In 1986, too they had a successful season winning nine out of 14 matches and drawing one game. Out of all the best years in their rugby for the Randles Hills boys, was the year they remained unbeaten in 1988 in seven matches and won the Schools Rugby Sevens In the recent past, Kingswood has been at the top and in the year 2000, won the President’s Trophy for the first time under the captaincy of Chamara Vithanage. beating the Thomians30-26 Then in 2003, 2004 and 2005 they won the President’s Trophy. They also emerged Singer A division League champions in 2008, Seven of their players were picked to play for the Sri Lanka Youth Team in 2005.
There are some ruggerites who have brought honour and fame to the school. They are Owen Mottau who was one of the finest full backs Sri Lanka had at that time.
He played from Dimbula ACC for several years and for the country, then Iqbal Jumar played for CR & FC both of them earned a name in rugby, but never played for the school. Later players of the calibre of Rohan de Silva, Lalith Wijeratne, Tissa Wijeratne, Jerome Gray, Mahinda Serasinghe, Parakrama Samaraweera, Kenneth de Silva, Dunstan de Silva, T.M.N. Sherifdeen, Roy Kamil Amith, Palitha Wijesuriya, Ananda Kasthuriarchchi, Jeewa Galgamuwa, Senaka Bandara, Amjad and Ansar Buksh, Chamara Vithanage, Ibrahim brothers Raja, Ronnie, Rizvi, Nilufer, Dev Anand, Nalaka Weerakkoddy, M. Fazal, Fazil Marija, Tilina Weerasinghe, R. Raheem, R. Samaratunga, S. Weerasinghe,N. Ranasighe, T de Silva, L. Premawansa, L.M. Wahab, Chamara de Silva, Sameera Wijesinghe, I.B. Galagoda, Eranda. Weerakkoddy, Navin Wijaratne, Roshan Weeraratne,Gayan Weeraratne, Riza Raffaideen, to name a few. Today their key game is with Wesley College for the L E. Blaze trophy which was presented by the famous Kingswoodian Roy de Silva.
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