Sri Lanka second biggest rugby playing nation in Asia

by Hafiz Marikar

Rugby: Sri Lanka has been playing rugby since the British colonialists first introduced it in the late 1800s. It has now evolved into a full league structure rivaling the country’s first love, cricket.

Today there are 103,000 players in Sri Lanka, according to a recent survey, making it Asia’s second-biggest rugby-playing nation behind Japan and ahead of giants such as Australia and New Zealand.

Support is fed by generous television exposure, with home internationals screened live and one club match shown real-time every week during the rugby season. Sri Lanka has quietly nurtured a large playing population with an inspirational bent which makes rugby a daily feature on both the sport and society pages.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose three sons play including one who is a flanker for the national team regularly attends rugby matches.

And this year, Sri Lanka broke through into the elite Asian Five Nations tournament for the first time, raising hopes of further national successes, illustrates how rugby has gone from colonial recreation to mainstay of Sri Lankan high society.

Like most school fixtures, the event has attracted hundreds of well-heeled spectators, turning the venue into a virtual family picnic. As women pass around boxes of sandwiches and hot dogs, men down fizzy drinks or cold beer and shout advice as the game progresses.

Dozens of corporate executives loosen their ties, roll-up shirt sleeves, and sip cold drinks, while cheering their former school and clubs. On the sidelines, press photographers shoot smartly dressed young women.

Rugby popular at school level

Rugby is hugely popular at school level, each game attracts thousands of spectators, much more than a top club cricket match, Chandrishan Perera the famous commentator, a former CH & FC, Sri Lanka winger and one time administrator, has told AFP.

Support is fed by generous television exposure, with home internationals screened live and one club match shown real-time every week during the rugby season.

Rugby remains the only sport that allows foreign players at club level, and is such a priority for Sri Lanka’s rich, private schools that they regularly splash out on overseas coaches.

But for all the players, enthusiasm and mass appeal, Sri Lanka are ranked a lowly 45 in the international listings, sandwiched between the Ivory Coast and Madagascar.

Caltex Chevron Lubricants, the main sponsors of club rugby have commenced the season two weeks ago with a huge bang.

This season the competition is going to be very interesting as all club teams have raised their standards with last year’s teams at the bottom of the table given the option to invite two expatriate players to play for the team. I saw couple of games, there is more kicking than ball handling, kicking has become a ‘illegitimate child’ of Sri Lanka rugby, both at club and school level.

Today every child initiated by their parents feels he could play rugby and no sooner he enters the field gets the ball and kicks.

Today kicking has become a fashion in the game of rugby in Sri Lanka. Rugby is a game, winning possession by the forwards and scoring with the three-quarters.

They must be able to breach the defence and execute ploys such as the dummy pass, scissor pass, reveres pass. We haven’t seen a Nimal Maralande, Mohan Sahayam, Glen Vlangenberg, Irwin Howie, Didacus de Almeida, Omar Sheriff, Frank Hubert special in the recent years.

Good work done by forwards of winning possession is lost as kicking is adopted and valuable position lost. After a long spell, Sri Lanka has got a good fly half, that is non other than Kandy’s Fazil Marija.

Today, the kicking menace has caused late tackles. The so called late tackles for which referees are compelled to ‘blow’ due to crowd agitation are not really late, due to the crowd prevailing on the referee with boos and hoots, the referee too is inclined to blow for late tackles which are due to unnecessary tackling.

If players can minimize unnecessary kicking, unwanted late tackles will be avoided. If the ball is run and passed, the question of kicking, late tackles, will never arise.

Therefore it will be good for coaches to take their teams back to the good old days. The three-quarters in rugby were full of creative play, such as scissor passing, dummy passing, reverse passing loops etc.

‘Kicking’ has become a ‘cancer’

Today kicking has become a ‘cancer’ in the body of rugby in Sri Lanka. It is incumbent not only on the coaches, but on the players to sharpen their basic skills and group skills. I can remember when Kandy Sports Club played against Kandy Lake Club In the late 1960s, I saw a brawl between two players from the opposing sides, but the referee of the game Late Col. Bertie Dias, did not even look at it and followed the game. When these two players were ignored by the referee, gave up the fisticuffs and decided to join the run of play.

In our rugby the slightest touch bring such pressure-laden crowd reaction that a referee calls for a penalty. Rugby is a game where there should be a lot of body contact. I do not advocate fighting on the field, but there should be robust rugby without which the game is not complete.

In the past we saw rugger players play a couple of matches and watch a few club games, where he learns to become a complete and competent rugby player, but its not so now which is the downfall of their rugby career.

Even during pre-season training the players are not prepared to tidy up the basics skills, instead of which they want to get into a game situation which is disastrous.

Tackling poor

Today tackling at school games is poor, this has spread into club rugby too, where you find collar tackles and stiff-arm neck tackles. Talking about the standard of school rugby, there aren’t enough good coaches to guide the increasing number of schools playing rugby. Schools must emphasize that their school coaches are trained and the minimum qualification they should have is the Level 11 - IRB Coaching Certificate.

The SLRFU periodically conducts coaching training programs with the ARFU coaching instructors and issue Level 1 & 11 certificates for those who are successful at the examinations after the assignments. Only these coaches should be engaged by schools to raise their own rugby standards, instead of using anyone who has played the game.

Rugby is becoming very professional and should be handled that way for the betterment of the game and increase participation by all schools to feed good players to the clubs, thereby automatically the number of clubs in all districts will increase, resulting in a good feed back to the National team.

Most of the top ruggerites, are completing their playing career. Without giving back what they have got from rugby in the form of coaching, refereeing and rugby administration, the players are ‘lost’ to the game. Due to this, there is a vast difference between school and club rugby standards.

The Sri Lanka Referees Society is over 50 years in existence but only a handful of good referees are available today and even these referees are much to be desired. This may be because the Referees Society undertakes the training and development of referees and also involved in assignments.

IRB releases money for development

In most countries the Rugby Union takes on the training of rugby coaches and referees under their development program where the IRB releases over 8 million annually towards development. It is not necessary that a rugby player has to be either a coach or referee. In overseas sports like Football, Hockey and Rugby there are top class referees who have never played the game.

Sri Lanka had some top referees in the early years like Col. Bertie Dias, Darley Ingleton, Ashey Cader, Miles Christofezz, Malcom Wright, M. Azain, Mohan Sahayam, Gen. Denzil Kobbekaduwa, Harry Goonetillake, Gamini Fernando, Anton Benedict, Ana Saranapala, Nimal Lewke, Tony Amith, Daya Jayasundera, Frank Hubert, S.W.Chang, A.R.M. Moosa. Anil Jayasinghe, Nizam Jamaldeen, Dilroy Fernando who is with the whistle for a long spell, is the best in the game today.

It is high time the rugby parent body take a count of these lapses and rejuvenate rugby from grass roots and provincial level and bring the standard up.

Rugby under capable men

If one recalls in the past, Sri Lanka rugby administration was under capable men like Y.C. Chang, Gamini Fernando, Malik Samarawickrema, Lionel Almedia, Dr. Maiya Gunasekera, Brig Japana Jayawardene, Mohan Balasuriya, Priyantha Ekanayake, Nimal Lewke to name a few. One should never forget the yeoman service rendered by Y.C.Chang and his team. It was he who introduced sponsors for clubs.

Today all schools and clubs are benefited. It was Chang who took the Clifford Cup knock-outs to Kandy which helped the present champions in a big way. He had top promoters in his team like Dushantha Samarasekara, Malik Samarawickrema, Lionel Almeida, Kishin Buttani, Gamini Fernando.

Without a better club structure, what I believe is Sevens Rugby which will feature at the 2016 Olympic Games, could be better suited for Sri Lanka to expose players to high-level training and international competition.