Sports

Some people dream of success, while, others wake up and work hard at it

After the conclusion of the Carlton Sevens first leg the promise is for more action for those who wish to take that road. The schools rugby season is offering excitement with the competition limited virtually to 3 schools. Royal and Peters are the two unbeaten teams that have the best chance of annexing the league title. Royal have two matches to be played among equals Peters and Trinity who are among the first three. Peters on the other hand will have play fourth placed Isipathana. Trinity played St. .Joseph’s on Saturday. At the bottom it appears that St Anthony’s and DSS who have one drawn match each are fighting to avoid relegation.

St Joseph’s have one win but have best chances of staying afloat as they have three matches left after this week .This is a side that should not have been fighting to stay afloat but should have crossed the finish line with those at the top. Science had Peters in all sorts of panic as it was for most parts of the game it was Dulaj against Science. When the game was into the twenty Seventh minute of the second half all of the twenty two points was scored by Dulaj.

Next week will be most interesting with both clubs as well as school matches being worked out. Which road will you take? The club season which was a dying spectacle may see another lease of life as clubs are expected to field expatriate players.

Royal have two matches to be played among equals Peters and Trinity who are among the first three. (Pic by Amila Prabodha)

Connected to the third road at the junction that keeps all guessing is the statement by the President of the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union Asanga Seneviratne that he expected Sri Lanka to make the line-up of teams at the 2023 IRB World Cup .This was reported following the announcement of sponsorship for the club season. This brought to my mind a quote from an unknown’s author reported in a management journal. “Some people dream of success, while, others wake up and work hard at It”. It may not suffice to make a pronouncement and make public your dream but there will be a need to work hard to get there. There is ten years to get there and that is a good time span for a long range plan. This requires to be focused and have a national plan which will require the commitment of future presidents of the SLRFU.

As a starter work out the succession for the next three Presidents who can be part of the council and part of the vision .That will take you to within striking range of 2023 as you have covered six years plus one more left for the present president. This looks very simple but need the commitment of the whole rugby community. Do we have or can we have will be the question. Cant unless everybody agrees to the direction and do not support a parachutist in between.

The requirement is to address the whole game and not part of it. The schools are an important and integral part and are fighting against odds as they cannot find grounds .Change of venue as well as date are a common feature and matches are played as early as 2.00pm.

The tournament is lopsided with cricket scores being a feature in the Division 1 B segment. The same can be said of some of the matches in the A segment. One has to look at this so that games are competitive to produce the best for the national team. A competition is not a permutation and combination of how to include more teams because somebody needs to be pleased.

There are schools that have played rugby for years and produced many Sri Lankan players like Issipathana without a ground. Science has done up their grounds and is used for matches by many schools but the ground and the facilities need to be improved. Schools that have grounds mistakenly believe that if they allow rugby the turf will be damaged. Speaking to Tony Amit who has the experience with the CCC grounds where rugby is played over the turf he said that all that was needed is to let the turf grow. At any rate after the cricket season the pitch has to be attended to and there will not be any major additional cost. In the case of a worst case scenario of fear he suggested that the pitch area be covered using an astro turf. This is not rocket science when it comes from Tony. These will have to be addressed to achieve the dream among the most important of working together.

Buzz words such as we have taken rugby to the north and east when you don’t strengthen what you have is lovely for politics. If you look at reports it is not only to Kayts and Vavuniya that we have spread the game very soon we will be in Chennai.

If you bring a set of boys form the north and ask them to participate in a fitness test of the referees and make a fanfare through the media as well to the council that the Referees Society conducted a training programme for referees from North - might as well take the long distance runners and hand them the whistle.

Vimal Perera is a former Rugby Referee, coach and Accredited Referees Evaluator IRB

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