Piyaratne Samarakoon now a soccer coach

By Upananda Jayasundera Kandy Sports Special Correspondent

Piyaratne Samarakoon, an old boy of St. Paul's, Kandy (now Sri Sumangala) is a fine soccer player and a soccer promoter. He is also a boxer who represented YMCA and became runner-up at the Intermediate Boxing Championship in 1960.

His boxing coach was Derrick Raymond and his contemporaries were Parakrama Jayasundera, M. Sabaratnam and Bulner brothers to name a few. He migrated to Germany in 1966 and from there he proceeded to Norway in 1972 and was employed as a Technical Officer. In both these countries he has followed soccer coaching to improve his coaching ability.

In Sri Lanka, Piyaratne has represented Katukelle United as centre forward in football. His contemporaries were Mahinda Aluwihare, T. Amidon, Peter Medawattegedara and Dougie Fernando to name a few. Like his younger brother Piyatissa, who represented Sri Lanka in soccer, he has also donated footballs and football jerseys to needy schools and this time he donated some materials to Senkadagala Vidyalaya and Talatuoya Central School, Kandy whom he has coached in soccer at junior level for them to become champions at district schools level. Piyaratne has also helped the unfortunate ones in the tsunami affected areas when he came on holiday to Sri Lanka at that time.

He has suggested to have soccer tournaments starting from ages 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 and to select the district or national sides from these players. All these tournaments should be on district and provincial levels, Piyaratne has said.