Rugby: Resuming school season far from reality

Hopes of foreseeing a possible start to school rugby activities remains far from reality, according to the Vice President of Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association (SLSRFA) Susantha Mendis. 

School rugby came to a standstill on March 14, 2020, after the Ministry of Education took a decision to shut down schools across Sri Lanka, with the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Since then, the SLSRFA has made several attempts to resume the Dialog Schools Rugby League Championship, but ended the year without any activity being carried out from its annual events calendar. 

"We are not in a position to even think of drawing up plans in any possible way. Right now we are documenting the plans for the upcoming school rugby season as we have to prepare for it anyway. But it all depends on whether the situation in the country will improve," Mendis said.
 
SLSRFA officials are on tenterhooks whether the school rugby season could be held as planned in 2021 even as they prepare plans to present to its sponsor Dialog Axiata. 

At the same time they are aware things could go wrong as in 2020, where only a couple of weeks of play in the Dialog Schools League was possible. 

"We obviously have to think positive, but in a worse case situation, we will also have to be prepared for it. I think the ended year already taught us that lesson pretty well. So, we do have a Plan 'B' and 'C' in place if our original plan fails to materialise," explained Mendis. 

As in 2020, SLSRFA is eagerly drawing plans to conduct its activity and events calendar, which may include over 20 tournaments and workshop programmes. 

Among the most important is the Under-19 Schools League Championship, a natural crowd-puller, and the Knockout and Sevens competitions of the same age category. 

In addition, similar competitions are usually conducted for age groups of Under-12, 14, 16 and 18 and a few tournaments for girls. 

But in 2020, SLSRFA had to curtail its entire activity and events calendar to just a few weeks, and spend the rest of the year simply hoping the situation would treat them well to conduct a shortened Schools League Championship, the Knockout and a Sevens competition. 

Halfway through last year SLSRFA was forced to change its plans, to fit a further shortened League competition and a Sevens tournament, aiming to pick players for the national youth squad as Sri Lanka was in line to host the Youth Asiad last year. Eventually 2020 ended with a totally inactive season for SLSRFA. 

"We also have to wait for clearance from health authorities, now that the pandemic situation has moved far beyond. We also have to wait till schools re-open and seek clearance from the Education Ministry to go ahead with sports activities, leave alone rugby. Perhaps if Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) is able to kick-start its club season through any format, the schools will be able to assess the progress and think positively of holding competitions," Mendis, who is also a Vice President of SLR, said. 

For 2021, it is reliably learnt that the Ministry of Education has instructed all schools to present its annual budgets excluding expenditure on sports events and activities. 

Under such background rugby-playing schools may find themselves in a perplexing spot, on how they could even raise sponsorships individually, if there was any possibility of competitions being conducted. 

As in 2020, SLSRFA has made an initial plan to conduct its full list of competitions beginning from March. 

As a back-up plan they are preparing a draft to conduct important competitions in June or July and if that too fails to materialise, they would move ahead with a Plan 'C', which includes a further shortened list of competitions. 

When the Ministry of Education decided to shut down all schools on March 12, 2020, the SLSRFA called off most of its scheduled matches of the Dialog Schools League, hoping to resume when they receive the green light from the higher authorities. 

The league match between St. Anthony's College and Trinity College, played behind closed gates in Nittawela on March 14, was the last school rugby game played in 2020.