Royal College and St Peter’s College, two schools with a rich rugby history have banded together to play for schools that have very little showcasing on the field of play in an age when trophy-winning, not promotion of the sport, is everything to some schools.
The occasion marks the centenary year of St Peter’s College and Royal College have stepped on board to deploy their players in solidarity with the less privileged schools.
The show itself will unfurl at St Peter’s College ground in Colombo on October 14 and 15 spearheaded by former Sri Lanka fly half and international referee Dilroy Fernando who has apparently become the foremost rugby promoter in the country while the rest of the retired heavyweights are too preoccupied with backstage politics and mere hollow talk.
Second division inter school champions Thurstan College, the rising DS Senanayake College, the revivalist Zahira College whose rugby history runs back a hundred years, Vidyartha College a school that will ask for nothing, Wesley College and Sri Sumangala College in Kandy grabbed the invitations and are among the contestants who will play against schoolboys from Malaysia, Australia and Bahrain.
Organisers contend the event will be unlike any other in recent years offering a memorable occasion for players and their supporters who will not have to pay to enter the venue which Fernando described as one of the best offering dressing room comforts and spectator welfare.
“This is an event that aspiring schoolboys cannot afford to miss playing against foreign players. It is an occasion for our schoolboys who have very little to show their talents with an eye to the future. I was once like them and this is how you persevere with your goals as players,” said Fernando as he launched the countdown on Wednesday.
His remarks may reflect the fact that some schools are only concerned about winning trophies and their desire to take rugby to more people and places is non-existent.
More than 20 commercial partners have jumped on board, among them the big names in sport like Dialog, George Stuart, American Water, Hemas Hospitals and rugby’s online live-streamer Papare.
Players from the Gordon Rugby Football Club of New South Wales and the University of Technology in Sydney will be the two teams from Australia who will have their first taste of Sri Lankan schools rugby.
