Is This The End Of Our Rugby?

Written by: on 9th May 2010
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Despite a year and half rolling by and two IRB reminders of banishment from international rugby served, the 2010 AGM of the SLRFU hasn’t moved any closer to seeing the light of day. For a second time in a month the crucial meeting, on which the country’s rugby future is hinged, failed to materialise last week, so, heightening uncertainty if a resolution can be found at all.

The IRB as far back as last November made it clear that unless an elected committee replaced the government-appointed Interim Committee, the Sri Lanka RFU would be stripped of its membership, which is to say our involvement in international rugby is finished – and, by extension, would as good as mean curtains for domestic rugby too. So that the warning might not be taken as idle threat, the IRB set an April 1, 2010 deadline.

It wasn’t intended to be an April’s Fool joke, but it might as well have been just that: an AGM was scheduled for March 29, and only two of the seven Provincial Unions and the Schools Association showed up, insufficient to make up the required quorum. The saving grace, however, was that an effort had been made to conduct the AGM (after more than a year’s evasion), and that apparently struck a sympathetic chord with Dublin. The IRB extended its deadline to June 1.

The IC intending to be a “good boy’’ in IRB eyes, set April 30, a full month before the world body deadline, for a second shot at the AGM. But again the lack of a quorum rendered the AGM a nonstarter. If anything, the second failure provided compelling evidence that a resolution to the impasse can’t be found by applying the same conditions that led to failure in the first instance. The no-shows for the AGM scheduled a second time were even greater: just one Provincial Union and the Schools. Bar the Central Province RFU, the other six provincial unions stayed at home.

Though there are some weeks yet before the IRB June 1 deadline expires, one wonders what other avenues are available to pursue a resolution. After all, it’s not as if the feuding parties are unaware of the grave consequences involved in allowing the impasse to outlast the June 1 deadline – consequences that the two parties ironically keep reminding each other of in the continuing blame game. So, if the dangers ahead haven’t helped subdue the feuding and inspired instead a closing of ranks between the disputing parties, then, it is forgivable to assume the lovely game is on its deathbed.

The game can yet be saved of its obituary. The first requirement is for the IC and the Provincial Unions to admit that whatever they’ve been quarreling over is of lesser relevance before the harsher prospect of being rendered pariahs of international rugby. If the game is ever brought to that sorry pass, pointing the finger of guilt at each other is going to be of no avail: our rugby would already have been consigned to history. For that, both parties will be equally to blame – at issue here, after all, is not who’s right or wrong about whatever, but their direct responsibility for killing-off the game – all because, in the intensity of their feuding, they forgot the cardinal edict:  the game is above all else.

The egos of many officials in the two parties might be bigger than their brains, but you’d expect them to not do things that might leave blood on their hands. Even a fool, after all, won’t want to be remembered as one of the conspirators in the murder of a century-old game, once the country’s most popular sport, a game that provides living evidence of a part of our colonial history and a game that’s so easy to get sentimental over. Said simply, the community’s attachment to rugby is too binding for it to bid a final farewell, now or ever.

The emotional impact of the impasse sadly has been lost in the feuding parties’ verbal exchanges – all over, let’s be blunt about it, the inclusion of two interim committee members, Lasitha Gunaratne and Kiran Atapattu, as vice president and treasurer respectively in an elected committee.

Apart from the duo’s rather questionable credentials, their ambitions to seek jobs in an elected committee are audacious to say the least. The IC of a year and half was pretty much a controversy-a-day reign. It had this uncanny knack for making enemies with just about anybody they were supposed to work with, from provincial unions, clubs, to referees and coaches and even national players. So naturally any IC member was not going to be welcome in an elected committee. And so it was proved when the IC duo sought nominations through the Western Province RFU: Gunaratne was outvoted and Atapattu, pulled out

But the duo obviously won’t take no for an answer. They’ve somehow succeeded in getting themselves nominated from the Central Province RFU – and that is the nub of the story, the reason why two scheduled AGMs didn’t take place and why the SLRFU faces possible excommunication from the international rugby family.

As is public knowledge now, the influential WPRFU’s nomination list (that excludes the pair of IC aspirants) was handed late and summarily rejected by the Sports Ministry. The only other list (which includes the IC duo) received by the Ministry was that of the CPRFU. Whether this situation (which automatically yields Union office to Gunaratne and Atapattu) was accidental or designed is difficult to establish, though suspicion is difficult to resist that the latter had been the case.

Be that as it may, the Ministry’s decision to call for a ‘second’ AGM with the only set of nominations it accepted for the ‘first’ smacks of bias – reek as it does of an attempt to prevent the WPRFU’s nominations, which, if permitted, will at once shut the door on the IC duo. The WPRFU’s voting strength is so powerful that it outnumbers the collective strength of the other provincial unions. The WPRFU, though, wasn’t going to let the power they hold idle: it chose not to attend both scheduled AGMs, and being the most powerful of provincial unions, a majority of the other unions joined – so denying the required quorum for an AGM. Said simply, this is pretty much a game of tit-for-tat.

To no great credit of the IC, an IRB official had to fly over from Hong Kong to suggest what had always been the obvious resolution to the impasse. IRB official Jarred Gallagher advised the IC to schedule a ‘third’ AGM, but this time with fresh nominations. What this means in real terms is that Lasitha Gunaratne and Kiran Atapattu won’t be on the 2010 SLRFU Committee – unless unconstitutional methods bring them to office.  Whether the IC and the Sport Ministry will agree or not to Gallagher’s formula is, well, what decides the future of Sri Lanka rugby.

thesundayleader.lk


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