De­fend­ing League cham­pi­ons Fa­ti­ma Col­lege scored an im­pres­sive hat-trick last Sat­ur­day, win­ning both the un­der-14 and un­der-17 ti­tles in the Dig­i­cel School rug­by tour­na­ment for the third year in a row.

In the un­der 14 fi­nal, Fa­ti­ma de­feat­ed Bel­mont Sec­ondary 3-0 in a nail-bit­ing per­for­mance that saw Alec Stew­art score a drop goal in the first half and Fa­ti­ma hold­ing on un­til the fi­nal whis­tle.

In the un­der 17 fi­nal, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege blast­ed St Mary's Col­lege 39-0.

The tour­na­ment opened in Sep­tem­ber with nine un­der-17 teams and four un­der-14 teams from north, com­pris­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 140 play­ers, un­der the di­rec­tion of coach Bren­don O'Far­rell.

The dis­play of tal­ent im­pressed league of­fi­cials and con­vinced them that this year's rug­by sea­son would prove even more com­pet­i­tive than that of 2011.

The Schools' Union is in the process of de­vel­op­ing leagues in To­ba­go and south, which will be in­cor­po­rat­ed from Jan­u­ary.

The league will em­bark on fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the school coach­es as a pri­or­i­ty since such skills will en­able ef­fec­tive teach­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with chil­dren of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and abil­i­ties.

League of­fi­cials have not­ed that the Dig­i­cel Schools' Rug­by League is an ex­cel­lent re­source pool for the re­cruit­ment of play­ers for the na­tion­al un­der-19 team and the na­tion­al school­boys rug­by team.