EFLI gathering momentum in SL
- Details
- Category: Other-sports
- Published on Tuesday, 24 January 2012 22:27
- Written by Sankha DLT
- Hits: 469
The Elite Football league will get underway in Pune, India in October and The Colombo Lions have been hard at training from November last year.
ThePapare had the opportunity of speaking to the COO of EFLI in South Asia Dilroy Fernando, and he was impressed with the progress of the sport in the Island after its introduction just two months back. When we queried regarding the progress of EFLI in the country Fernando said, “There has been a lot of interest shown by various parties and we have gotten a lot of positive feedback”, stated Fernando. “We will be bringing down 3 foreign coaches next week to conduct training sessions and the CEO of EFLI Richard Whelan is also expected to come to the Island”.
“45 players have been selected from the training sessions which were carried out during the past few months”, said Dilory when asked regarding the selections for the tournament. ThePapare then asked the number of rugby football players who have taken up the sport to represent the Colombo Lions Fernando stated that 4 players have been short listed to play for the team, namely, Dhanushka Boteju, Dushanth Lewke, Mohomed Sheriff and Bilal Hassen.
According to the COO, different athletes from different sporting streams have come together to make up the team. Sportsmen from cricket, rugby, athletics and water have come together in forming the team according to Dilroy. He further stated that there has been a major following in the country and higher education institutes namely ACBT and ANC have also shown great interest in taking up the sport.
“We currently have only one team in Sri Lanka, but our main goal is to educate the rest of the country about the sport and we hope to start off the second and third teams from the Central and Southern Provinces”.
Currently the training is in progress under senior rugby referee Gamini Indrasena who has been called up as the head coach of the side while he will have assistance from D. Nimal and Priyantha Guneratne who are also two senior referees in the country.
Last year’s CR&FC skipper and former national skipper Dushanth Lewke has been put in as the strength and condition coach and will play a dual role in the team as player and coach. There are 7 coaches in total in the current set up and according to Fernando they are looking at more options to take the game further.
India will field 8 teams while Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal will field a team each for the tournament. EFLI will be South Asia’s first professional American football league.
ThePapare.com will be the official web partner for the Colombo Lions and EFLI in Sri Lanka
The teams are as follows,
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