Royal-Thomian!

A concept now hijacked?

Frank Vedamanikkam, a parent of a schoolboy attending S. Thomas’ College in Mount Lavinia, has made a very virtuous public appeal that sanity prevails at what is known as Royal-Thomian sporting activities after his son was reported to have been brutalised at a water polo match last week at the Sugathadasa Stadium in Colombo.

For Vedamanikkam to go public in a society where parents prefer to remain silent for obvious reasons, the tragedy that befell his son must have been a chillingly frightening episode to experience and a wake-up call for the heads of Royal College and S. Thomas’ to come out and face reality.

With such mayhem taking place today, the Royal-Thomian concept must be far from its founding principles, hijacked by some spoiled brats to whom dignity is not in humility but in their whims and fancies that only a decent following can despise. Can this sporting rivalry any longer be a model for others to emulate and are such Custodians mere frogs in the well?

This is not the first time that a Royal-Thomian match was mucked up by violence. Four years ago their annual one-day cricket encounter was disgracefully disrupted by violence and now comes the sadism at a water polo match. Vedamanikkam has also ruefully stated that no measures were taken to check what he said was taking place at this encounter in the past.

If this is the kind of rot that is allowed to flourish at activities in the name of sport, then the Royal-Thomian will be better off merely taking its place in history as a thing of the past, for far too many gentlemen from these two schools have contributed to its resounding success in a bygone era who will no longer want to be associated with in the present climate.

There may not be a need to reiterate that these two schools were hallowed institutions which taught prime ministers their alphabet and sent them out as top-shelf quality products. Schools that were founded on public decency and missionary values that even their rivals grudgingly admired in the past.

Are such values now trashed into a dustbin by some cocky misfits who are a perverse? Can the Royal-Thomian juggernaut expect other schools to play second fiddle when the spirit of sport has been turned into a demon? Are schools that were once pillars of virtues now sitting alongside those that have gained notoriety for violence and indiscipline, or is it that scoundrel schools have now reformed to the point that the slightest bout of cruelty on the part of thoroughbreds can expose hypocrisy?

Whoever wants to conceal what took place last week must be told in no uncertain terms that it takes just one wrong to undo a hundred rights and a Society that pontificates decency has no room for cover-ups.

If violence is a means of settling scores, the miscreants ought to find another platform and leave sport for what it is meant, or at least in the hands of polite people.

Sport will always have a platform, not those who seek to usurp its invention.

-Callistus