In the light of recent inquiries on questionable referring standards of a few match officials, the Sri Lanka Rugby Referees Society held an emergency meeting today(29th Wednesday) to evaluate and decide on the plight of the match officials concerned in two games that ran into controversy.
The first incident was at the game between Science College and St. Peters College Bambalapitiya, which even led to the manhandling of Gamini Indrasena who was referee of the said game.
Gamini was suspended for two weeks after the official inquiry, and the final verdict on this decision was made today.
Another incident which sparked a lot of controversy took place in the game between Royal and Isipathana, where the Isipathana players allegedly went beyond the rule books in terms of physicality. Apart from the inquiry on the game in itself, the referee of the encounter was also in hot water, as Royal had made a formal complaint against the referee since there were many lapses right throughout the game.
Video footage was used by the SLRRS to confirm the various illegal incidents that took place including eye gouging and several punches that were left unnoticed. Two tries, which seemed to be legitimate using video evidence were not awarded and also the weak manner in which situations were handled when such incidents were brought to notice by the touch judges were all part of the evidence against the referee Pradeep Fernando.
After considering all the evidence, the SLRRS deemed that the referee had not taken the necessary action and lacked the required control that is necessary in officiating such a game and thereby suspended Pradeep for a period of one year.
The touch judges were also given a weeks’ suspension as the emergency meeting sorted out all necessary questions that had to be answered in terms of the plight of the officials in concern. The touch judges got off with a lighter sentence as they had indicated that these incidents were brought to the notice of the referee in the middle there by having dispensed their job adequately.
