Younger generation prefers football

Angu RAJENDRAN

'Football is preferred to Cricket according to a survey done on 16 to 18 year old school boys during our many school visits' said Niroshi Siriwansa, Assistant Manager of Education UK of the British Council, at a briefing at the British Council recently. The British Council has decided to launch a very unique Futsal football tournament based on this survey. Every year the British Council organizes an Education UK exhibition and has been doing this for the last 18 years. This year the exhibition comes with a quiz and a Futsal tournament. 'The UK Universities are perceived by Sri Lankan students as rigid and conservative but we want to bring out the fun aspect of an education in the UK and hence 'Futsal' says Niroshi.

This Futsal tournament will be between the 8 schools that qualify in an UK Education quiz. And the team that wins will be taken for a tour of the UK in April. The Futsal tournament will be held on the February 06 and the Quiz is on the February 05 at the Hotel Ceylon Intercontinental. The second round of the quiz is once again rather unique.

The questions while being based on the British Council Sri Lanka will require the team to score a goal in order to get a chance to answer.

Thirty schools including at least fifteen International and fifteen State schools have been invited to participate in the tournament while eighteen schools with a fifty-fifty proportion have accepted the invitation, including AIS, CIS, Gateway, Lyceum, Mahanama, St Benedict's, Royal and Isipatana.

So the brawny footballers will now brush up on their General Knowledge and English as well and prove that footballers have brains too. Kishore Roy who has been a football referee in the UK and who is now Country Examinations Manager will conduct the football tournament while the Education UK team headed by Fahim Shakur will organize the quiz that will be based on sports, education and general knowledge. It is but natural that today's instant-gratification generation prefers a very fast-paced football game to the slower game of cricket.