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. |