Biker gang hunts down referee in high drama

By. Callistus Davy

Apr.27 (Mirror Sports) - Schools rugby which according to experts is the next best commercial commodity after the Sri Lanka cricket team was rocked in its very first week of the League championship with another referee assaulted or escaping serious bodily injury by a whisker after Saturday’s match involving DS Senanayake College who suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of a promising Sri Sumangala College team.

Havelock Park in Colombo hosted the match and referee Suranga Aruna Shantha, a former Air Force player, had been allegedly targeted by supporters of DS Senanayake with some of them said to be personal from the Air Force itself and involved in DS Senanayake College rugby.

Shantha had left the venue on his bike and was reportedly pursued by six assailants but managed to avoid a serious situation and made it just in time where he received the protection of police personnel from the Narahenpita who arrested the suspects.

After the episode, Shantha had fired a letter to the Rugby Referees Society of Sri Lanka providing details of how he became the hunted after the match while calling for an inquiry.

The Daily Mirror learns that an inquiry is yet to be conducted on the incident and the matter may even be hushed up as Air Force personnel are alleged to be involved in the matter.

The Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association which is packed with school masters calling the shots is expected to conduct an inquiry today. The parent body of the sport, Sri Lanka Rugby will also be investigating the incident which is not the first time that a match official in rugby has been subjected to violence and the scourge seems to be never ending.

School rugby, which is the cradle of the sport, has today become the island’s number one spectator-enriched domestic game ten times more popular than professional club rugby and club cricket and the stakes keeping rising at every new season with corporate companies rushing to extract product mileage from schoolboys under cover of sponsorships. Some of the highest paid coaches in the country can be found in schools rugby and the seasonal budgets of the elite schools can range from Rs. 50 to 80 million.

According to marketing experts schools rugby can have an investment of between Rs. 500 to 600 million for a season thereby subjecting schoolboys and their keepers under extreme pressure to produce favourable results. Past players and experts have often warned that present day schoolboy rugby players have been put under tremendous pressure to produce favourable results to satisfy the vanity of old boys and team sponsors who are in a race against time to market their goods and services riding on the popularity of the sport at school level.