By A Special Sports Correspondent

One of the positives about the Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) conducted inter-club Division 1 league rugby tournament is that there are eight teams in the fray and the side finishing last faces no risk of being relegated to a lower division. For the record, there was a B Division tournament conducted many years ago, but right now there is no talk of conducting that tournament this year.

But all that relegation talk goes into oblivion when one sees the progress Colombo Hockey & Football Club (CH & FC) has made this season despite the awful performance last season where they finished at the bottom of the points table (eighth place) at the conclusion of the league tournament for 2022/23. CH & FC is not a side that can be written off that easily. The club has attracted some of the best youth rugby players and signed up veteran coach Sanath Martis to put the players through their paces this season.

Rugby in Sri Lanka has remained an elite sport. Unlike cricket, where the best players are now coming from the outstations and making it to the national team, rugby is still heavily depended on the talent that Western and Central Province schools produce for its sustenance. There is another factor that makes rugby attract media attention and that is the participation of members of an elite family; like the Rajapaksas. The present CH & FC side has Rohitha Rajapaksa who plays as fly half. A few seasons ago there was Yoshitha and before that Member of Parliament and the eldest in the family Namal; all of them being involved in the game at club level at the time their dad-Mahinda- was the First Citizen of the Country. Just imagine the attention the sport of rugby union receive when Mahinda was president and the three sons were dabbling in the game. There were other notorious issues connected to rugby which made the sport get highlighted for all the wrong reasons during this time. Let’s not go to that part of history in this sports column.

Looking on the bright side rugby was the sport where the Royal family was involved in when all three Rajapaksa brothers were involved with some club contesting the domestic league rugby tournament. This factor just makes it so difficult for other sports to be in the limelight. All that glamour that the sport attracts for the reasons given above will be over the day Rohitha hangs up his boots. However, as for CH & FC, history has taught this institute lessons on maintaining prestige and glamour in the fields of entertainment and sport.

Just reverse the clock to 1863 we saw the emergence of a club for recreation and sport when this nation was known as Ceylon. It was established under the English and one had to be British to represent the club at sport. Starting its operations at Race Course the club then moved to Maitland Crescent in 1962; in which year they opened the doors for locals to obtain membership and represent the club in domestic sport; especially rugby. Bryan Baptist had the honour of becoming the first local to captain CH & FC at rugby. But still the influence of British nationals or expatriates continued to boost the image of the club. Individuals like this writer, who was born in the early 1970s and watched rugby in the 1980s, can remember The Gymkhana Club authorities flying down British national Simon Hunter for the Clifford Cup knockout tournament; a move that made members of the other experience goose bumps. When Hunter (who played as wing three quarter) kicked an up and under during a game one could go to the restaurant area of the club, have a quick tea and comeback to his or her seat and miss nothing because the ball would almost touch the clouds before it came down again; the description of his kicking prowess given here using a figurative expression common to spectators back then who witnessed the best of CH rugby. These foreigners who played in our domestic tournaments knew the makings of the rugby ball and possessed intricate knowledge of the seam of the oval shaped object which made it behave when a player kicked it. This was sheer magic to us!

Then the club had a phase of employing Fijians and was a force in rugby in the early 1990s. The Gymkhana Club then had the fortune of obtaining the services of Hisham Abdeen, who was already a legend at Havelock Sports Club having established himself as the best player Sri Lanka produced in rugby. There was a time when the best players leaving school preferred to join CH & FC because of the prestige the club had in the sport of rugby and the standards this institute forced players to maintain both on and off the field.

Now times have changed a bit and a player in the likes of Rohitha is capable of attracting players from any club to don CH & FC’s red and white jersey. The Rajapaksa brothers still have much clout in the societies they frequently step into and showing some of that influence in rugby is easy as taking a walk in the park.

This is an era where clubs are struggling to exist because of the many economic hurdles they have to encounter. There was a time just about during the pandemic when clubs were struggling to pay its members for playing competitive rugby. Now there are influential members in rugby playing clubs who can get players to think of doing the unthinkable or saying yes to something which is not so close to their hearts. There have been occasions when players who wanted to quit the sports here in Sri Lanka and immigrate changed their minds and stayed back because an individual with clout offered a ‘lifeline’. Havelock’s Sanjeewa Jayasinghe was all ready and packed up to go settle down in Dubai when someone from Kandy SC made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Thanks to what happened Jayasinghe had a ‘new lease of life’ at rugby and was able to bring honours to both club and country.

Rohitha is perhaps the last ‘regal’ face in local rugby. He may have a few more seasons in rugby the least and then hang up his boots. He has had a few coaching stints with schools and may take up a more serious role in coaching or even take to rugby management in the club scene. CH & FC enjoys having him in the team’s line-up and the ideas he brings to the discussion table. The Maitland Crescent Club showed him how to handle matters related to elitism, difficult times and protect an institution’s identity at rugby. Rohitha is sure to cherish all his rugby memories at the Gymkhana Club.