Roy­alians Rug­by Foot­ball Club got a dou­ble try from At­i­ba Rod­ney that steered them to a nar­row 25-24 tri­umph over Har­vard in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rug­by Foot­ball Union (TTR­FU) League on Sat­ur­day at Har­vard Pitch of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Af­ter a fourth-place fin­ish in 2025, Roy­alians made a strong bid to im­prove this year against a team that fin­ished a spot ahead of them in 2025. The Caribs made a clean sweep of the ti­tles at stake last year, in­clud­ing the league, with their arch-ri­vals Trinidad North­ern tak­ing the run­ner-up po­si­tion.

On Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, Rod­ney led a se­ries of four tries that led to 20 points in a hot­ly con­test­ed af­fair. Apart from Rod­ney, there were tries from Jude King and Isaac Dil­lon, which led to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of 20 points, while just one of the four tries was con­vert­ed to lead the Roy­alians to 22 points.

How­ev­er, a penal­ty as­sured that the Roy­alians men gar­nered suf­fi­cient points (25) to take them over the line in the end.

For Har­vard, Nigel Balling­ton, the for­mer na­tion­al play­er, scored a try and had two con­ver­sions in the team’s los­ing to­tal of 24. Har­vard got five-point­ers from Ro­mario Har­ry­dath, Joshua Hec­tor, and Em­manuel Joseph for a to­tal of 20 points, with Balling­ton adding the next four points from con­ver­sions.

Af­ter the game, Roy­alians coach Fe­li­cian Guer­ra said the win kept them in the race for the ti­tle af­ter two loss­es.

"Har­vard was an im­por­tant one; it was a close game. The win would have al­lowed us to stay in the ti­tle race, as we’re try­ing to keep our­selves close to North­erns, who is cur­rent­ly lead­ing the ta­ble.”

He added fur­ther, "Har­vard is a team that is very com­mit­ted and very pas­sion­ate. The re­sults would have shown the ef­fort by both teams, with one win­ning out by a last-ditch ef­fort that al­lowed us to se­cure vic­to­ry. We al­ways ap­proach the sea­son with the in­ten­tion to fin­ish first, to win the league. It's still an at­tain­able goal for us. We just need to keep our heads down and keep work­ing.”

The Roy­alians will next face de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Caribs next month, a match that will call for prop­er prepa­ra­tion for Guer­ra’s charges.

Ac­cord­ing to Guer­ra, "As in sport, as with any­thing else, who­ev­er wants it more is the team that's usu­al­ly go­ing to come out with the out­come. We don't dwell on things that would have hap­pened in the past.”