Sri Lanka Rugby Championship
National rugby union club competition
The Sri Lanka Rugby Championship, known as the Maliban Inter-Club Rugby League for sponsorship reasons, is the major national rugby union club competition, held between the top Division 'A' rugby sides, in Sri Lanka. The annual home and away competition, featuring eight Division 'A' teams, has been held since 1950. The competition has been held between November and February for the last three seasons. The first round of the tournament runs for seven weekends with the final match of the first round in early January, no games are played over the Christmas holiday period. The second round also runs for seven weekends, with the final match in the beginning of March.
History
Early years of the league (1950-60)
The first league competition commenced in 1950. when the Clifford Cup was converted to an inter-club competition played amongst eight clubs, Kandy Sports Club, Dimbula Athletic & Cricket Club, Dickoya Maskeliya Cricket Club, Uva Gymkhana Club, Kelani Valley Club, Havelock Sports Club, Ceylonese Rugby & Football Club and Colombo Hockey and Football Club. The inaugural winner of the competition was the Havelock Sports Club, led by Ian Labrooy, completing an undefeated season by defeating Dimbula A & CC, 13-0. Havelock SC retained the league title the following year again maintaining an unbeaten record during the season. In 1952 Ceylonese R&FC, captained by Mahes Rodrigo (who went on to become a dual international in rugby and cricket) won the league title.
The public source identifies “Sri Lanka Rugby Championship” as national rugby union club competition. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lanka, Rugby and Championship.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25041000. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sri Lanka Rugby Championship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.