As rugby playing schools prepare for a new season and are showcasing with pride their sponsors or commercial partners, a set of controversial officials from the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association (SLSRFA) entrusted with the sport have taken the law into their hands playing foul.
The championship is scheduled to start in June and this week defending League champions St. Peter’s College felicitated more than five major commercial godfathers who are prominent among the leading business establishments in the country.
But like two of the other heavyweights and best crowd pulling teams Royal College and Isipathana College, the Peterites too will have to thrash out differences with officials of the SLSRFA who have yet to prove their credentials as worthy custodians of the game.
With no known rugby background or culture, officials of the SLSRFA have decided to do what no one has done before them acting like sadists by converting the League into sudden-death matches midway unable to show a parallel case anywhere in the world besides waiting to grab proceeds from ticket sales by ordering teams to abandon their home grounds and play at so-called neutral grounds.
While the leading schools have decided to ensure that other people’s children don’t become the private property of outsiders, the Peterites became the first to felicitate and media showcase their sponsors at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo and they took pride in parading three of their top players Dulaj Navodya, Yumeth Shihara and Ranithu Rithmal on the catwalk sporting new playing kits.
“St Peter’s College stands out as a beacon of educational excellence and notable accomplishments including sports and we take pride in our heritage.
“We strongly value the role of sports in discipline, character-building and fair-play for success”, said Fr Rohitha Rodrigo, the school’s rector as they felicitated their rugby-savvy sponsors.
Royal College have already in a scathing deliverance on SLSRFA officials called for a rethink of a decision to play the second and most decisive stage of the League away from the eyes of team sponsors at so-called neutral venues that will also deprive them of gate money.
The inter school league championship tournament-wise has been running smoothly much to the liking of teams and their commercial godfathers for many years.
But the League’s main sponsor, phone service provider Dialog will have much to thrash out with the SLSRFA who have cast a spoke in the wheel saying they will have the right to gate money and pay just a percentage to schools in an act that smacks of a rip off at the expense of other people’s children.
