The Sri Lankan rugby football union yesterday released the rugby calendar for the 2013/2014 season and the mercantile rugby sevens tournament has been shifted to May this year.
The Mercantile rugby sevens tournament which usually takes place at the end of the year has been bought forward in an attempt to give the Sri Lanka pool more competitions before they take part in the upcoming international tournaments.
The club season will kick off with the Inter club sevens tournament which will be worked off in May and it will be followed by the Mercantile sevens tournament. A new addition to the 7s frame work is the SLRFU/Franchisees 7s which has been proposed to involve only the local players. This tournament is scheduled to take rugby outstation as the teams will play one leg in Colombo (15th and 16th June) and the 2nd leg in Nuwara Eliya (29th-30th June). The tournament will include only local players representing their respective franchises.
The lucrative Carlton sevens tournament which took place in June last year will take place on the 27th-28th of July while the 2nd leg will take place on the 3rd and 4th of August.
The first international 15 aside tournament the HSBC Asian Five Nations, will be played in April this year with Sri Lanka going against the likes of Chinese Taipei, Thailand and Kazakhstan. The first National seven aside tournament (Malaysian 7’s) will take place on the 31 Aug & 1 Sept.
Inter club league tournament in November
The Inter club fifteen aside tournament which normally takes place during mid year will commence on the 8th of November and will go on till the 12th of January while the 2nd round will take place from 17th January to 16th March 2014.
The Clifford cup knock out tournament will be played from the 20th of March while the finals of the tournament will take place on the 30th of March 2014.
