CHRIS DHAMBARAGE
COLOMBO – A panel of Citing Commissioners and a panel of Judicial Officers have been appointed to monitor the Inter-Schools Under-19 President’s Trophy Knock-Out Rugby Tournament, which will kick-off at Havelock Park on Friday.
Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) will appoint a Citing Commissioner and a Judicial Officer for the four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the final, on the request of the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association (SLSRFA).
SLR have already named three World Rugby accredited Citing Commissioners namely Pradeep Wilson, Wimal Senanayake and Wimal Perera while Aruna Jayasekera and Shahid Sanghani are the two Judicial Officers.
The SLSRFA has taken this decision with the intention of enhancing the outcome of the tournament match-results and following a series of incidents, which took place during the Super Round segment of the tournament.
A citing commissioner is an independent official, who is responsible for citing players who commit foul play which is not detected by the match officials.
Teams could bring offences to the attention of the citing commissioner for review and the citing commissioner may cite a player even if the referee has already dealt with the issue.
The Citing Commissioners may cite players for an act of foul play detected by the Match Officials, and which may have been the subject of referee action.
Meanwhile, two promising teams D. S. Senanayake College and Zahira College will battle it out in the first quarter-final of the President’s Trophy Knock-Out Rugby Tournament at Havelock Park on Friday. The kick-off is at 4.15 p.m.
Both teams have kept to their promise and have made some vast strides in the tournament since they were promoted to the ‘A’ Division following a successful stint in the ‘B’ Division segment last year.
Incidentally, D. S. Senanayake were the ‘B’ Division champions and Zahira were the runners-up last year and now they have another chance to make a statement at the highest level.
Even then, D. S. Senanayake will start favourites as they looked the better side having narrowly missed out the chance of playing in the Super Round segment of the league tournament.
Zahira were equally brilliant as they finished in sixth place in the overall standings having recorded four victories in the first-round segment.
In fact, Zahira last made their appearance in the knock-out tournament in 2016 where they lost to S. Thomas’ 10-43 in the quarter-finals at the Royal Sports Complex in Colombo.