Form 6C was created for ruggerites

Sharm de Alwis

They may not have been able to pass exams but were elegant in passing the oval ball in the manner of a Denis Ratwatte or a Kavan Rambukwella. Even when they chose a job, they opted for Planting so that they could continue with the game.

Their foreign bosses also had a whale of a time but it never was Thoppi Thotam because of the inherent discipline of the indentured Tamil labour force.

My eyes have drunk deep of the epic encounters in rugby and yet I thirst.

Clarence ‘Uncle Crow’ scored a try leaving his togs in the grasp of the crash-tackling adversary, Ana Gunawardena.

That was veritably a vernacular version of an incident in an Ireland-England game of the 60s.

The Irish stand-off, Michael Anthony Francis English was a renowned tackler. Playing England at Twickenham, Ireland was beaten by a last gasp try of England’s stand-off, J.P.Horrocks-Taylor. English, for once, missed his man who side-stepped like a ballet dancer.

Courtmartial in the Irish dressing room, English in his own defence: “There I was wih 50,000 pairs of hostile eyes on me as I went for the tackle. The Horrocks went one way, the Taylor, the other and I was left holding the hyphen.

Harold Pinker always got his man and when he did, the air was vibrant with the excited cries of morticians in the stands making bids for the body.

Havies had no answer to the line-out jumping of CR’s towering Eric Roles and so they were working out a code when YC interjected, “Hang the code, just throw the ball to Eric.

I’ll get it from him” The modus operandi worked smoothly and Eric had enough: “Don’t throw it to me,” he shouted to the Havelocks hooker.

Elated

When Marques was kicked by Pryor and Marques did not retaliate but only offered his hand to make the the offender feel a cad his team mates were elated when a devastating tackler was selected to play in the next game who would extract revenge.

Some minutes into the game, the ball was thrown to Pryor but forwards who flirt with danger have a sophisticated sense of survival and Pryor stepped out of the line-out as the ball neared him. Two Lions forwards crashed to earth simultaneously - fixed by each other.

T.B.Pilapitiya always played with a tropical storm on his face. He was the original ‘buncher’ and it is said that those who opposed him in the scrum never could sire. ‘Porky’ Hogg’s screams to referee Darley Ingleton that his rump had been bitten were of no avail in a CR/Uva encounter as Ashy Cader dispelled the referee’s stern look with, “Not I, Sir, I don’t eat pork.” To the ‘Merrie Men of Uva’ rugger was just an excuse for drinks and cameraderie at the Club.

A party without Eustace Fonseka was like staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

With his clipped diction and rib-tickling yarns, he would be the cynosure in any gathering but this day the young Brit was irked to ejaculate, “Fonseka, your face is like a duck’s backside” to which Eustace, nonchalently replied with a flourish, “I bow to your superior knowledge of a duck’s arse.”

‘Dabar’ Adhihetty would speak of his team-mates in Radella, Darawella and even Taldua when they had no coaches and each was for himself and God for them all.

Admonish

The captain would admonish a particular aspirant, “You played like a virgin after the honeymoon.” Dabar’s two sons, Pradeep and Dilip, both Trinity rugger Lions, played the game with gusto but Ken Murray would not be impressed, “Well played, you two chaps but for foul play you were never a patch on your father.” Kenneth Boteju has unleashed a flying tackle on the touch judge who was running along with Kenneth’s opposite number, Alan Henricus.

He has also picked up the ball which rolled close to him as he was on the touch line, nursing a concussion, sprinted and touched down in his own goal. Those were the days when we would ride our iron horses to Nittawela, Radella, Darawella or Taldua to watch vintage rugger but the planters we knew as bed-fellows would be vary of us because Lucky Vitarane had ‘polished’ Dabar’s collection of miniatures and, asked what he was up to, blandly said he was checking if it was coloured water.

Now, Lucky was black as sin with piano accordion teeth to match who once told me when I saw him grimacing into the mirror in my London ‘digs’ that he wished to have his front teeth removed because “these English bits like hideous looking blokes” and I consoled him by saying, “Don’t worry, Lucky, you are doing fine as it is.”

Prop forwards like Jinna Dias Desinghe smile with the muscles at the back of the necks and like one-liners they endure to produce duplicates like Jinna’s son, Kumar. Of all the forwards, they last longest and as Mike de Alwis would testify through false teeth because the originals were sacrificed in battle, playing anywhere else is like drinking water after wine.

He also admits, “What goes on in there at the scrums no one will believe.”

To illustrate, Ian McLauchlin the Scottish and Lions prop met the Irish number 8 Terry Moore in a pub who actually bought him a pint even though he was well known to hang on to a coin.

A maul

Came the match and as they were buried at the bottom of a maul with hell breaking loose, Moore whispers, “McLauchlin, you owe me a pint.” Shades of Len Hutton who confessed, “I have bought a pint but not too often.”

Away from the scrum and maul it is the fleet-footed threes that make rugby a spectacle. Dharmasiri Madugalle hardly ever kicked to touch because he wanted to keep the ball in play.

The few times he kicked to touch were for the ball to alight in Sunitha Ratwatte’s lap and Sunitha quickly got the message and they have lived together, happily thereafter.