“We should attract good sponsorship next year”: Nazeem Mohamed, former Science and Sri Lanka Sevens

By Shamseer Jaleel

It was a golden day in Science Rugby on 12 July when they walked in to a major final for the very first time. The venue was Royal Complex their opponent was none other than the defending champions Isipathana. 

Already handed off by many, Science walked in as the under dogs but a determined outfit with a bunch of players who want to prove themselves as nothing to lose even a defeat would ended them with a commendable report. They won at last edging out the defending champions in a tensed epic battle and super high quality rugby dished out by both teams.

Speaking to the Daily FT, Nazeem Mohamed said: “We had an uneven start lads took time to settle as a unit. We could have pulled off a few more schools league encounters but we missed out on them. But we hit the peak at the correct time. It was the Peterite league encounter at Bambalapitiya which was a turning point of Science rugby. We beat them convincingly. From there onwards we never looked back. We beat the Bambalapitiya school once more in the Milo President Trophy knock-out quarter final encounter. Moving in to the semi final we knew we could overcome Royal. But we wanted a fair neutral venue which the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association agreed upon to host the game at Havelock Park. We beat Royal in an-one sided affair. In the final it was all about our boys’ teamwork, dedication, coaching staff sacrifices and commitment along with our sponsors propping up with us at difficult times.”

How Science Rugby shot to fame

When one carefully analyses how Science Rugby shot to fame in last five years, some interesting facts would unfold. Science College is the only school that got promoted in to the top tier and sustained thus improved standing year on year. Undoubtedly, Science has the highest ‘return on investment’ considering the expenses incurred and results delivered in a highly competitive and commercialised schools sport. 

Science College itself has gone through a complete and clear transformation along with the game over the last five years.  When more fancied schools spends more than double or even triple the amount of money invested by Science College but yet failing to deliver as much as these less affluent kids do, it is fascinating to dig deeper and find out the secret behind the success so far and what’s next in the plan for Science Rugby. 

Mohamed continued: “For us it’s not winning or losing a game. It’s about shaping up the futures of fabulously talented young kids belongs to a different socio strata that many top division schools or the Rugby fraternity is not very familiar of and up bring the standards of an educational institute that needs it’s right place.”

The overall standards of the school was uplifted through rugby which was the objective of setting up Science College Rugby Support Group in 2008. 

“We have produced good teams, won many games and more importantly we won many hearts. That’s what is more important for us. At the time we stepped in, it was quite clear for us to pick Rugby to play the catalyst at Science College.  At Science we hardly attracted applications for Grade 1 admissions, all good students were leaving for greener pastures, educational standards were not so good and we were losing matches in “C” division. Rest is now history and we today stand as a champion outfit, school attracts more than 2000 applications.

Recipe for success 

Commenting on the recipe for success, he went on to say “I would attribute that to few principles on which we operate. The school authorities extends their fullest support to execute our plans and we have a clear understanding of the role play of rugby at Science. The Committee is only facilitating the sport and have given 100% freedom to coaching staff and management to go out and play their hearts out for the school. Robust structure to attract players at junior levels. No parental interferences are encouraged or entertained. We all do it for the love of the sport and college and we have been able to establish faith and trust among all stakeholders through absolute transparency.”

Science College doesn’t carry big brands with the team and considering the commercial aspects of it and the kind of investments needed today, we asked him about funding and sponsorships. “True, we don’t have big brands associated with us and there could be a commercial reasons for that known only to them. We started this with only 250,000 contributed by five old boys and our budget has risen to about Rs. 5 million now. This is very small considering we manage all age groups within this budget. We depend on the same set of old boys for 80% of this and rest comes as sponsorships. This is where our challenge now rests. This is not a sustainable model to operate in today’s context. There is lot of strain on us already and could even collapse soon. Science Rugby has proven itself, not once, five years in a row and we hope we would be able to secure a good sponsor for our next season.”

Nazeem speaking further said: “We could not have achieved this without the support of Coaches Amila Chaturanga and Colin Dinesh, the former Peterite who mauled the side into a tough outfit which would never bend down on their knees without giving a good account of themselves along with physical guru Ransilu Jayathilake. We will be no more a pushover side in future. With some sponsors expected in the near future we want to make sure Science rugby continues to grow positively with a good and sound junior level which will keep on producing some outstanding players in the years to come. We hope justice will be done for these bunch of players when the Junior Asiad National Under 20 outfit is picked in the coming weeks.”