School Rugby League under ‘quarantine’
View(s):The Dialog Schools Rugby League 2020 may face a complete halt with officials predicting a longer ‘layoff’ than expected to the competition that was initially postponed for two weeks.
The Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association (SLSRFA) initially took a decision to ‘temporarily’ suspend the Schools League on March 13, but with the number of COVID-19 related cases escalating uncertainty prevails regarding the resumption of the tournament.
The Dialog Schools Rugby League began on March 4 with hosts St. Peter’s College trouncing Dharmaraja College in Colombo 50-14. The first week ended with Kingswood College travelling down to Colombo to beat St. Joseph’s College 24-17, Wesley College thrashed Vidyartha College 36-6 and Trinity College outgunned S. Thomas’ College 17-8 in Mt. Lavinia. On March 7, Royal College thrashed St, Anthony’s College 41-14 at Royal Sports Complex and Isipathana College recorded a hard-fought 17-10 win against Science College at Havelock Park.
But the tournament was stalled the following week with only three out of six games taking place as scheduled. S. Thomas’ pulled off a 24-22 win against St. Joseph’s at Longdon Place on March 11, a day before the SLSRFA decided not to hold any junior age level games. A day later, the school rugby officials decided to temporarily stop the Dialog Schools Rugby League Championship, but allowed two games in Kandy to proceed, as the team from Colombo had already reached the hill capital while the match between Trinity and St. Anthony’s was about to kick off, when the decision was made.
Eventually the game between Trinity and St. Anthony’s was held behind closed doors at Nittawela with Trinity emerging victorious by 26-5 and the following day at the same venue, St. Peter’s beat Vidyartha 34-3 in similar surroundings.
The three remaining games (Wesley vs Isipathana, Dharmaraja vs Science and Royal vs Kingswood) were postponed, with the hope of recommencing the competition after two weeks of observation. However, since the number of COVID-19 patients in Sri Lanka had risen from 11 to above 100 and government was trying to curb the spread of the virus by imposing police curfews, almost all activities in the country were stalled.
“It is still early to make a clear verdict on what and how things will turn out in the days to come. There are many uncertainties prevailing at present and, if we are to move forward with the school rugby competitions, we may have to make certain changes to the format,” stated an Executive Committee member of SLSRFA.
The first round of the Schools Rugby League would have come to an end by April 5 if it had gone as scheduled and with the knockout competition to follow.
But with the present situation, school rugby officials are left in a hapless position, with schools compelled to release its students for the GCE Advance Level examinations by July. According to the competition schedule, the school rugby season should end by June.
“Now we may have to wait until end of April or even towards the latter part of May before receiving a total clearance from the government authorities to hold any competition. As of now we do not see any hope of having any kind of sports events in the near future,” the official further said.
The SLSRFA has kept few options open in order to see the Dialog Schools League being completed as scheduled. The school rugby authorities are contemplating calling off the Division I and II Rugby Sevens Tournaments as part of their ‘Plan B’, if the tournament fails to recommence by end of April.
If there is a further delay, they are even moving the Schools Knockout competition towards the end of the year or abandon it, giving priority to the Schools League tournament.
“We are keeping our fingers crossed, and at the same time we are highly concerned about the safety of the stakeholders, where most of them are schoolchildren. Everything is beyond our control now, and we will have to wait for clear instructions from the government authorities to see what is in store,” he added.
A day before the SLSRFA decided to call off the Dialog Schools League, the Ministry of Education decided to shut down all schools until April 20. Soon after the decision was made the Executive Committee member of the SLSRFA told the Sunday Times, that it will observe the management of COVID-19 in Sri Lanka during the coming weeks, before making a final decision.
As a last resort, if nothing fails to materialize as expected, the SLSRFA will have no option but to abandon the Schools Rugby League Championship for this season.