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Dilip Kumar Lanka's lone star at Rugby World Cup
Rangi Akbar reporting from Sydney
Dilip Kumar, not to be mistaken for the Hindi filmstar of yesteryear, is a busy man at the ongoing Rugby World Cup. He is chairman of the New South Wales Rugby Board and is a member of the Australian Rugby Union, currently organising the event.

He was the Duty Director at the Argentina vs Romania World Cup match at the Aussie Stadium in Sydney on October 22 where he had to give speeches and a presentation. He is the Development Director of the Australian Rugby Union as well. Argentina beat Romania 50-3 in this encounter.

Dilip has done his little bit to help Sri Lankan rugby. Dilip played rugby for Trinity with players of the calibre of Tikiri Marambe, Roy Balasuriya, Jayantha Weerasinghe and Sam Samarasekera but his real strength was as an athlete where he bagged the coveted Athletic Lion at Trinity for his performance in hurdles at the Public Schools Athletic Championships that year.

He together with staunch old boys like Mohan Sahayam, Nahil Wijesuriya, Jayantha Weerasinghe and Nimal Cooke, to name but a few, managed to secure the services of Australian Geoff Garland to coach Trinity this year. Trinity after being bashed about in the previous years, staged a magnificient fightback to lose the Bradby by a close margin. It was indeed a great revival to the once rugby proud school in Kandy. More help is in the way, this time to the Sri Lanka Rugby Union, he assured.

Drug scandal
A drug scandal has hit the Rugby World Cup now. France breakaway forward Oliver Magne has been quoted as saying that he suspected some rugby players of doping and welcomed the decision of the Rugby World Cup organising committee to start testing the new designer steroid tetrahydrogestrnone (THG).

He has been quoted as saying: "I am a fitness fanatic and I work very hard to ready myself for the big matches. I see some players make progress in double quick time, I wonder how they can manage it.

"World Cup players are now being tested for THG. Rugby World Cup officials confirmed the THG test would apply to all new samples collected and also might be retrospectively applied to samples taken in the past month as part of the World Cup anti-doping programme. THG is the drug that high-profile European sprinter Dwain Chambers claims he unwittingly took as part of a supplement programme.


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