Vintage rugby in the 1960’s

A Well known Sri Lankan Rugby presenter calls the Rugby world cup as an event of “Think, Talk, eat, drink Rugby”. Well there could not have been a better description for this grand spectacle now nearing the completion at the “Eden Gardens” in Auckland, New Zealand. World cup Rugby has taken the world by storm with many new entrants in the fray. The stadium is a sea of heads and a festive atmosphere prevails.

For those of us who watched rugby in Sri Lanka in the sixties it was a vintage rugby of different kind. Well it was a period sans televisions, mobile phones or such sophisticated equipment and main communication channel was the Radio (only Radio Ceylon) and the newspapers namely Observer, Daily news, Times Daily mirror and the Sun that provided the news.

It has to be admitted that this era had a rich crop of Rugby scribes such as late M B Marjan, Austin Daniel, T M K Samat, M V Mushin, N E Thangarajah, and Elmo Rodrigopulle as I remember. The Times cup final special supplement was an informative souvenir. But for us most looked forward was the Rugby commentaries of legendary Bob Harvie (who passed away recently) whose vocal description still stands in our memory , neatly clad armed with the characteristic pipe he dished out rugby in style….. Up it goes…… ball is coming CR way Sirimanne to Sahayam over to Didacus de Almeida and to Sari de Sylva and he scores (a loud yell).

These were classics of the three quarters in the years gone by with Rugby reigning supreme in Sri Lanka. During this era it was our routine to queue up outside the Longden place gates from around 3. Pm and to park ourselves closer to Bob Harvie’s commentary box. Spectator support unlike today was tremendous. In my later years I had the privilege of sharing the commentaries with Late Diyanesh Rajaratnam who handled the microphone with consummate ease in the same manner he handled the cricket bat. It’s a pity that Diyanesh an accomplished commentator in both cricket and rugby departed at a relatively young age leaving a void that will be hard to fill.

Now nearly three four decades later rugby has gone through a complete transformation. Dominance is by the forwards they use the muscle and power ruthlessly and advance over the heads of opponents, at the back a smart lock is waiting cunningly with the ball hidden in his hand and at the appropriate moment sends it out to the Fly half who more often will give a booming kick to gain advantage and the forwards will pile over for the ball again. Saga continues, the beauty is ball moves rhythmically and the play goes on.

The scrums and the line outs are tidy, mauls are ruthless. It seems that apart from the forwards other key positions are the fly half and the full back who are expected to gain territorially with deep booming kicks- perhaps bringing back memories of former Havelock’s and Trinity Fly half Glen Vanlangenberg, late Nimal Maralande and the Ratnam brothers Jeff and Dan. Glen too was a good place kicker but the amiable Jeyer Rodriguez also of Havelocks was said to be having magic boots!

Let me confess that I have not played around with the oval ball but developed an insatiable affection for this rowdy game played by gentlemen. Well having watched a fair number of matches in the RWC. My advice to the Rugby fraternity would be – maintain a dialogue with the ref to clarify the doubts, feel free to air your views, get good touch with penalties in the own half, equip fly half and full back positions with good kicking skills, most importantly play clean, we hardly saw any brawls, minor hiccups were short lived.

Apart from Indrajit Coomaraswamy’s national team’s plucky display in the 1974 Asiad final and Hisham Abdeen’s bowls victory in Hong Kong Sri Lanka is yet to come with a good performance in the International scene. Declining standards of Sri Lankan Rugby is a matter of concern amidst more and more schools taking up to the game.

It’s sad that the rugby violence is found more in school games than the clubs. Respect the old age adage that “rugby is played to make friends” and enjoy the game. Australian wallabies that beat the proteas from South Africa in a keenly contested game locked horns with New Zealand all blacks who had no difficulty on winning over a gallant Argentine team on Sunday in a block buster game that kept the spectators on their toes until the long whistle.

Sunil Karunanayake