Confused officials of Sri Lanka Rugby have called for an investigation, one of many, after Thurstan College’s players and their parents were reported to have been assaulted in yet another show of schoolboy violence at a match at the Nittawela ground in Kandy last week.
It happened moments after the match when players of the opposing St. Sylvester’s College which is now a government-run school surrounded referee Sarath Madugalle and reportedly manhandled him after which spectators set upon the Thurstanites and their supporters.
Thurstan College won the match.
Coach of Thurstan College Rohitha Rajapakse has in a scathing report to Sri Lanka Rugby, which is the ultimate authority on rugby in the country, said that the attack on his players and their supporters left a slur on the sport and should never have taken place on the field of play.
Rajapaksa brought the latest bout of violence to the attention of the sport’s keepers by personally handing over a letter to Sri Lanka Rugby’s executive director Rohan Gunaratne in which he states that the situation had even gone out of control and his players held hostage at the ground for 90 minutes as anti-riot police personnel stormed in to rescue the visiting team.
Rajapaksa has conveyed to Sri Lanka Rugby that stones and bottles had also been used to attack the Thurstan players some of whom left the field under police guard with bloodied faces.
According to the World Rugby charter of which Sri Lanka is a party to, an assault on a referee or match official means a life ban on the offending player.
But in a move hard to fathom, referee Madugalle has in a letter to Sri Lanka Rugby said that neither he nor the Thurstan players were assaulted with only a brawl taking place between players of the opposing team.
Sri Lanka Rugby’s deputy president Rizly Illyas said they were in possession of photographic and video evidence of the assaults unleashed on the Thurstan team and has directed both the Referees Society and the Schools Rugby Association to submit their reports.
“As long as the Referees Society is run by people with individual interests the situation will not change. The whole refereeing set-up has to be re-structured. Referees are not strong enough to take decisions,”said Illyas.
But the biggest fear among rugby followers in the country is that with several violent incidents of the past overlooked or swept under the carpet by tournament organizers, the latest round of violence in schools rugby will also end up as another forgotten incident.
Many followers of rugby remain skeptical that anything will be done to clean up the deadly mess that school rugby has fallen into as the tournament itself has been politicized with interference and nothing short of winning is accepted.
Only one school head in the country spoke out publicly against the exploitation of amateur youth sports in the country when Trinity College’s principal Andrew Fowler-Watt, a British educationist, warned that school sports will suffer what he called a “terminal decline” if schoolboys are not allowed to enjoy the goodness of sport.
He made the remarks at the launch of his school’s centenary cricket big match with St. Anthony’s College two years ago.
Last week’s incident in Kandy only adds to a long list of violence at schools rugby that only goes to show to what extend players and their supporters will go to settle scores in a sport that is well patronized by commercial partners of the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association which has proved a total failure in providing security at matches.