There had been much hue and cry after a video produced by the Media Unit of the Royal College was recently posted on YouTube, after the rugby match played between Royal and Isipathana Colleges. It was clear that this video contained only a few selected incidents, two of which had resulted in Yellow Cards being given to two Isipathana players.
However, the video does not show the Yellow Cards being given to them by the Referee. This is almost similar to the now famous Channel 4 Video.
The video boldly claims that the Royal College Media Unit has exclusive rights for producing it. Does the Principal of Royal College endorse what his Media Unit had done? Isn’t he mature enough to understand that this kind of Videos, when given wide publicity in social media, could only further promote hatred among students of the two colleges?
Not so long ago, Royal College students were involved in turning the Reid Avenue to a mini battle field, when they were engaged in violent clashes with students of Thurstan College, prompting the closure of Reid Avenue to traffic. It also led to the subsequent closure of the two colleges, until calm was restored with the intervention of the armed forces. Is the Royal Principal encouraging a similar incident to happen?
It is learnt that Isipathana College authorities had acted promptly by appointing a Disciplinary Committee to look into the matter and recommend the course of action to be taken against any players who had been engaged in rough play. I believe if Isipathana could obtain an unedited version of the full video of the match, it will not be difficult to identify whether the acts their players have committed are serious or not. Such a Video would reveal whatever unacceptable acts committed by the Royal players as well.
However, Isipathana may face one big obstacle when trying to obtain possession of a copy of the unedited version of the video, which had been seen by a handful of people at a Club in Colombo 5 over the weekend. Isipathana Rugby Management is known to have challenged the ‘Professional,’ who had been contracted by Royal to make videos of all their matches, to release the original unedited video which may reveal unacceptable conduct of players of both colleges during the match.
Any impartial inquiry panel must first look into the authenticity of the video to ensure that it had not been tampered with. There is plenty of technology available to ascertain whether that video has been tampered with or not. If Royal are innocent as they claim, they should not hesitate to come forward and release an unedited version of the video. This is the biggest challenge they face now. Everything else will depend on the screening of the full unedited version of the video before an impartial inquiry panel. Members of this Panel should be persons of unquestionable integrity and should not have anything to do with the colleges concerned. Those who have witnessed the game claim that Royal players were also engaged in certain deliberate provocative acts. Some spectators have seen a Royal player walking over a ‘ruck’. They claim that this Royal player is responsible for the injuries sustained by one of his own team mates and that what he had done should have definitely earned him a Red Card. Another is attempted to have land a ‘Kung Fu’ style kick on an Isipathana player.
With regard to the claim of eye-gouging by Royal, one needs to refer the Oxford Dictionary to get the real meaning of gouging. Isipathana claim that not a single Royalist has been admitted to the Eye Hospital for a serious eye injury. It is learned that two Royalists had been treated at the OPD of the Eye Hospital for cuts below or above the eye and discharged the same evening. However, whether those injuries were due to wilful punching could be investigated.
Rugby is a contact sport and injuries are part and parcel of this game. Players seeking treatment at the Accident Ward and Eye Hospital after rugby matches have been very common. Haven’t spectators seen ambulances being kept waiting near the entrances of grounds where rugby matches are played? They are not for display but to take injured players to hospital.
Is Royal Vs Isipathana the only match where fighting among players took place? Were not Royal players involved in openly fighting in mid field against Science College this season? Wasn’t a Peterite player rushed to the Eye Hospital for a cut on his eyelid after their match against Science College? This is not an attempt to say that these are good examples for players to engage in fighting. Can the Royal Rugby College Media Unit release an unedited version of that match for public to see? That may be the only plausible way to prove their innocence. All the right Royal tactics resorted to so far prove that there is a deliberate attempt to take the main issue of the Royal Vs Isipathana match away. That is Royal’s walk out. According to Rule 9.1 of the Sri Lanka Schools’ Rugby Section, walking out attracts the punishment of the team walking out being suspended and points earned by them being forfeited. This has once happened to Isipathana when they walked out of a Seven-a-Side Tournament.
However, I cannot comment as to what kind of action the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Section (SLSRS) would take with regard to Royal’s allegations, given the fact that the team walked out in this case is Royal. If Isipathana was the team that walked out, the story would have been different. It is rumoured that a powerful group of Old Royalists, backed by some legal eagles, are going all out to stop the team being suspended.
Step No. 1 towards that will be to suspend the Referee. Having heard about the mafia that operates within the Referees’ Society, I would be surprised if Referee Pradeep Fernando does not get suspended, even for a week for alleged mistakes. In fact, Royalists claim that the video clip evidences that he had not allowed two Royal tries. However, the video has been filmed from one angle but the Referee was not well positioned to see both tries.
Mistakes of this nature have been committed even by international referees. I cannot count a single incident where a decision has been reversed, on the strength of video footage reviewed, after the decision of the game has been announced. In that case, there shouldn’t be any referees at rugger matches and the video footage can solely decide on the results of all matches.
The two touch judges will also be part of the inquiry to be held about this match. One of these two touch judges is said to be an up and coming referee who had turned out to be a thorn in the eye of a Senior Referee who calls the shots and biased towards his favourites. This young referee had been nearly assaulted at a Club Rugby Tournament held recently and the Chairman of the Inquiry Board who looked into the incident is reported to have resigned after his judgement on the matter was changed with the intervention of an influential personality.
What is most surprising is to see that a Referees’ Fact Finding Committee of 4 (four) has been appointed to look into the allegations levelled at the referees of the Royal College Vs Isipathana match and the other game between St. Peter’s Vs Science College. This Committee consists of three Royalists. Don’t the people who appointed this Committee know the principle of impartiality? Don’t the people who get appointed have the backbone and withdraw after declaring their interests? Most spectators at the match also would have witnessed the provocative and aggressive behaviour of the Royal rugby authorities, which included their two coaches, long before the half time. The video evidence will be there to prove that they were pointing fingers at and arguing with match officials near the touch line on the pavilion side, which aggravated the situation. Their ploy would have been to end the match without any injuries to their players, given the importance of their forthcoming rugby match to be played in Kandy. Soon after the game was halted as a result of the Royal coaches asking their players to walk off the field, the Principals of the two colleges are known to have consented, with the intervention of the referee, to resume the game. However, a bunch of Old Royalists have applied tremendous pressure on their Principal not to continue with the game.
It is reported that Isipathana has lost five matches this season before they played against Royal. It would also be useful if the officials of SLSRFS could ascertain whether Isipathana players or spectators were involved in any violent incidents against the players or spectators of the opposing sides or referees or touch judges after losing those games. If such incidents have not been reported, one wonders why Royalists are going all out making various allegations, and that too after the score was 27-20. Let us assume, for sake of argument, that the incidents captured and given publicity by Royal College were the only incidents that took place in the whole match. Even if one is so ignorant to believe that they happened, the following questions will have to be answered by the SLSRFS and the Referees’ Society. They are:
a.Does the Royal team has the right to abandon a match halfway by staging a ‘walkout’ claiming they were assaulted during the game?
b.Can a referee and/or touch judges be suspended merely because they do not seem to have seen some of the alleged incidents?
c.What would be the position if other school teams also resort to walkouts halfway during matches to be played in the future?
