Spectators not happy with rugby displayed at finals

Sharm de ALWIS

The sparse spectatorship at the President’s Trophy Finals was mute testimony to the public aparthy towards the brand of rugby dished out by even the premier Clubs in contention today.

The vast number of penalties conceded by both teams is evident of the mistakes made on the run but what was as significant was that there were far too many basic errors in passing and positioning which led to spilt ball: they couldn’t catch and give!

Both sides played a listless game and waited for things to happen rather than making them happen.

Even ‘Palama Yata’ Karthelis who normally indulges in a heady game played far below the level of his own excellence there was no support from his team mates and only mediocre opposition to spark his engine.

Quite a few players sported sausage fat to lend patronage to Keells and Cargills and a poke of a finger would have been two inches deep.

Not so long ago and without going into the hoary pastrecollections of fifty years shows the only rotund ruggerite was ‘Bole’ Philips but he manned the front row quite adequately to be in the CR team for many a year.

With fewer schools taking part in the sport than today and without the technical inputs, boys often learned on their own to acquire skills by reading, studying pictures and watching their role models at play.

They even made some coaches famous.

I was glad to be by the Tv to listen to Chandrishan Perera’s immaculate description of the proceedings and he too referred to a player of the past, Michael Jayasekera who would frequently hit a quarter gap.

I am eternally grateful to Shan for having got Sirisena into the awesome third row of the England team in the World Cup.

Where are the special skills that bench-marked others too, like Ken de Joodt, Didacus de Almeida, Kavan Rambukwella and their ilk? I have seen the 18 year old Kavan sell three simultaneous dummies to the combined might of Dimbulla/Dickoya in the ‘52 Cup Final and score under the posts.

Ken combined brilliantly with all types of co-centers including the quixotic John Burrows who often did not know which way he himself would go!

There was the versatility of Lionel Almeida who would excel with equal finesse as a stand-off, inner-three, winger or full-back.

There were other superlative inner-threes like Stanley Unamboowe, Larry Schokman, Lorensz Pereira and Abdul Majeed and when the present crop is seen in comparison surely there are better centers in a box of Kandos.

On the wings there were Dharmasiri Madugalle, double-International Summa Navaratnam and triple-International Basil Henricus. There was ‘Gal’ Herbert Fernando who would nonchalently move from his pet berth as the finest ever blind side flanker to scorch the sward as a winger and bring down the flyers that the ex-pats could muster.

Of the Horatios on the Bridge Malcolm Wright stands in supreme isolation but was Mahinda Ratwatte far behind?

Up font there have been durable Ashy Cader, ‘bionic’ Hisham Abdeen, Saman Jayasinghe, Priyantha Ekanayake, Haris Omar, the awesome combination of Thajone Savanghan and Jeffrey de Jong who crash tackled just anyone on the move.

And what of the boys who did wonders when the ball came to them from the scrums - Crown Prince S. B. Pilapitiya and Mahes Rodrigo who would set the threes in motion with Ago Paiva and later Nimal Maralanda, Mohan Sahayam and Glen Van Langenbeg.

These are names plucked from the top of the head but there are many more in the deep recesses of the mind of men who played for pride, not money.

The altruism of the Sponsors is short changed in today’s format and we are left with fond memories of players whose valiant deeds still echo in the Halls of Fame.

As the advertisement for Maruti voices, “Where have all the men gone?”