Should SLR invest more on 7s?

By. Harsha Amarasinghe

May.05 (Mirror Sports) - The Sri Lanka rugby team was once again easily beaten by New Zealand Under 85kg in Kandy last weekend. Sri Lanka was beaten by 27 points to 16 points in the first game and then they were handed a defeat of 25 points to 10 in the second game.

Although Sri Lanka played reasonably well in some phases, they were no match for New Zealand even when the visitors had been reduced to 13 men. SLR has already invested so much on rugby, but based on the performances against New Zealand it’s pretty clear that the Fifteens haven’t really made much progress.

This New Zealand side could not even be considered as their second division team given that it’s an Under85kg team, yet Sri Lankan forwards really struggle against them in what was considered a really important game for the nation.

In Sri Lanka players often get away with poor performances in every sports because fans and media are happy to always put the blame on the administration, but looking at the way Sri Lanka played the last game, it felt that a combined school team would have played better.

The three-quarters who perform well at inter club level, couldn’t even hold on to ball. The forwards who struggled against the New Zealand pack, kept trying to break it through when they had players out-wide crying out for the ball. Overall, the decision making from players were awful.

Having said that, this is arguably Sri Lanka’s best team based on the club rugby performances which means this is as good as it gets. Perhaps Sri Lanka’s only hope to make it big at international level lies in Sevens rugby.

Sri Lanka finished second in the Asia 7s under Dhanushka Ranjan’s captaincy in 2016 showing the potential they have in the shorter format but since then perhaps didn’t have enough investment on 7s. Fazil Marija, Srinath Sooriyabandara and Dhanushka Ranjan are probably the three best players Sri Lanka has produced in the last couple of decades or so.

Sri Lanka doesn’t always produce forwards in the size of Stephan Gregory or Omalka Gunaratne, but when they do, they could hardly last a season without injuries.

Not a single forward has been able to be a fear factor within Asia at least, so perhaps it’s time Sri Lanka plays to its strength and invest more in a format, they could actually strike it big.