Sport Extra

Rugby Hiccups on and off the field
 

BY SHARM de Alwis

"In and out of the garbage pails of life, love and lunacy," Carl Muller has reported, "A cloud nine rides over a cesspit," In the same breath, now that the rugby season is about to kick off and galvanise afficanados to gleeful intermission of the daily routine, the time is ripe to reflect on the lighter side of the game, on and off the field" where (Muller again) fact embraces fiction and lives, hopefully, most satisfactorily ever after".

T. M. B. Mahat, my first captain of Boxing at Trinity, scored the uncontested try when, as reported by SSP Sivendran, a raconteur of the first drawer, he worked on the ten metre rule, advanced, walking and hitching up his oversize trousers to be unchecked and to plant a try to win the match.

T. B. Pilapitiya always played with "a tropical storm on his face." He was the original buncher, long before the sahodarayas entered Parliament and the story wafting in the mists of Darawella, Radella and Nittawela is that no one, just no one, who opposed him in the scrums ever sired. Arthur Raymond was known to have been an excited spectator, wanting the mutilated body for his own business.

Ashy Cader played for the Country thirteen years on the trot and held a record that was only broken by Iron Man, Hisham Abdeen, better known as Bionic Man.

Ashy had a generally accepted clean sheet even thought he once in a scrum got his teeth into the rump of 'Porky' Hogg of Uva. Hogg screamed and appeal to referee Darlay Ingleton for Ashy to pronounce his innocence: "Not I, Sir, I don't eat pork."

Eustace Fonseka did very much the same when he got his claws on to an opponent's body parts which hurt the most. As the scream rent the air, Eustace was the first to pass on the blame: "Must have been Liberachi." Liberachi who was known to be "ambidextrous" or heterosexual or AC/DC was an the time on an operatic tour of the Country. "One could, if impelled write a sonnet about it."

The same Eustace Fonseka who was a legend in his lifetime and who would refer to Trinitians as Trinishans and declare that "Royal is the best College in the Country and St. Thomas' the best outstation College and Trinity is only the best school" had, according to Lionel Almeida, held center stage as was his went with the European ladies hanging on his every word when a young British buck who couldn't take on the role of second fiddle, said, "Fonseka, your face is like a duck's backside," to which Eustace replied in Lordy manner "I bow to your superior knowledge of a duck's arse," in a "voice that would have delighted any tragedician."

To win a game was "always diamond blue and white and butterflies romped, blowing kisses at the lantana bushes" and after the game were the frolic and laughter and youth echoed A.P. Herbert's

All my youth I well remember
When all was jolly, zest and fun
When all my limbs were supple and tender

-Did I say all? Well all but one

At times the tide turned and we would watch "in an outraged silence" and opponent score in brilliance and stun us to defeat, "to lose the game like on Good Friday."

'Dabar' Adhihetty speaks of his team mates in Radella, Talduwa and Darawella when they had no coaches and each one was for himself and God for them all. The captain would admonish a particular aspirant, "You played like a virgin after a honeymoon."

Those were the days when we teen-agers would ride our iron horses to Nittawela, Radella and Darawella to watch vintage rugby and the planters whom we had known as bedfellows in the same Boarding House would't accommodate us because Lucky Vitarane had polished Dabar's collection of miniature liquor.

Now Lucky was "black as sin and with piano accordian teeth" who once told me when I asked why he was grimacing into the mirror in my London 'digs' that "these English bits like hideous looking men" to which I responded: "Don't worry, Lucky, you're doing fine as it is."

Dabar's two sons, Pradeep and Dilip Adhihetty are both Trinity Lions and they played the game in the Trinity manner. Ken Murray is on record: "Well played you two chaps but for foul play you were never a patch on your father".

Prop forwards like Jinna Dias Desinghe have always smiled with the muscles at the back of their necks. Jinna's son Kumar has followed tradition. Like their one-liners they endure. Of all the forwards they last longest. to a front-row man, playing anywhere else is, according to Grame Barrow, like drinking water after wine. Ask Mike de Alwis.

Now, Mike has had all his front teeth knocked out and the dentist had made a packet. You ask him and he'll only tell you "What goes on in there at the scrums no one will believe.

C. J. Senanayake, affectionately known to us as Uncle Crow has scored off a five yard scrum in the Bradby sans his trousers which had been in the hands of the tackler, reminiscent of England's fly-half of the 60s, J. P. Horrocks-Taylor.

The crack Irish flyhalf Michael English for once missed his man. He explained: "There I was with 50,000 pairs of hostile eyes on me. I went for the tackle. The Horrocks went one way, the Taylor the other and I was left holding the hyphen."

Kenneth Boteju comes into the picture as one supreme winger who tackled the touch-judge when Alan Henricus sold a dummy to the touch-judge running alongside him at a Bradby.

The same Kenneth is credited to have touched down on his own goal line when he, whilst nursing a concussion found the ball dribbling towards him, picked it up and headed unchallenged for his own goal area.

The 52/53 English captain, Flt Lt R. V. Stirling in a scrum: "By Jove, chaps, can't you drop your shoulders under my rump anymore?" A little later, Kevin Skinner who started at only 20 for the All Blacks yelled to Tony White: "For God's sake get your shoulder under my arse, "Those game forwards didn't have to play with the one time Havies captain who was binding in the second row with soiled trousers.

The parantheses refer to Carl Muller who I consider the most invigorating Sri Lankan writer of our times and who stimulates mental excitement.