The Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union is being driven further into the doldrums with upheaval after upheaval hitting them square in the face. Even though the governing body of Sri Lanka’s much loved sport has been inundated with controversies for a while, the crisis is undoubtedly deepening.
The latest turn of events began with the nomination of Asanga Seneviratne for the presidency of the SLRFU. Asanga was nominated by the Western Province union and had the backing of four other provincial unions, namely Sabaragamuwa, North Central, Central and Ruhunu province. SLRFU’s AGM was scheduled to be held earlier this month but was postponed by the President citing that Asanga Seneviratne’s nomination cannot be accepted as the WPRFU have conducted their AGM unconstitutionally. The contention was that Jehan Canagaratne’s application for the post of president of the WPRFU was turned down by the outgoing Western Province committee and Mr Iiyas was appointed.
When ThePapare spoke to Mr Dilroy Fernando the current secretary of the WPRFU, he stated that “there is a clause in the WPRFU constitution that says for a nomination to be valid the club that is making the nomination should have played in all the WPRFU organized tournaments. Jehan Canagaratne was nominated by CR & FC, who had incidentally not taken part in the three tournaments organized by the WPRFU” and that is the reason the WPRFU rejected his application.
The under 21 & under 24 sevens tournaments were scheduled on the 17th of October 2010 and when ThePapare inquired as to why CR & FC did not participate in the tournament, we were shown a copy of the letter of invitation to the mentioned tournaments. The invitation letter was dated 11th October 2010 which was completely inadequate time to prepare a team for such a tournament. In the tournament rules was a clause that stated the club cannot field any players that have played in the Caltex league. This meant that the clubs had to find at least fourteen sevens players under 24 players and fourteen under 21 players in the space of six days. This is obviously the reason for all the top clubs including CR & FC not taking part.
That was the sequence of events which led to the postponement of the SLRFU AGM. As consequence to this, the International Rugby Board which had previously issued 3 warnings to the SLRFU to hold an AGM and appoint legitimate office bearers had no option but to cancel the SLRFU’s full membership status and issue an associate membership status.
In the meantime six provincial rugby unions have sent in ‘NO CONFIDENCE MOTIONS’ to the SLRFU chief executive officer Rohan Gunaratne. The motions were directed at both the Chief of Defense staff/ President of the SLRFU Roshan Gunatilake as well as Vice President of the SLRFU Lasitha Gunaratne. As soon as ThePapare.com got note of this we contacted some of the parties concerned, namely; SLRFU, Dilroy Fernando secretary of the WPRFU and Arjun Dharmadasa president Sabaragamuwa rugby football union. The SLRFU stated “the fault is not ours; the WPRFU had an unconstitutional AGM by not letting Jehan Canagaratne and Lasitha Gunaratne contest. That is why their nomination was not accepted. All the other unions have supported an unconstitutional nomination and therefore we could not allow the AGM to continue. They have made the mistake and blamed us”
Arjun Dharmadasa the President of the Sabaragamuwa union stated “Rugby in Sri Lanka has gone on for more than 150 years and we have never had something like this happening. The SLRFU president and vice president must take responsibility for their actions and have not done so, this why my union is filing a no confidence motion”
Dilroy Fernando the Secretary of the WPRFU said “Sri Lanka rugby is being penalized due to no fault of the players or anyone else, why should the entire country have to get a bad name due to the incompetence of a few. We are filing this because of a lack of governance by the SLRFU president and Vice President. Five out of the six provincial unions have filed the no confidence motion there by giving us a two thirds majority which is all we need. Only the Wayamba RFU which has just one club and three schools playing has not backed our motions.
Meanwhile ThePapare also learns that fresh nominations have been called and that they must be sent in to Shane Dullewa the secretary of the SLRFU within the course of the day. The AGM is to be reconvened on the 30th
