Aaqil’s refereeing called into question

 Referee Aaqil Jamaldeen

• Review meeting on Havies-Kandy encounter today

By Shamseer Jaleel

Former Royalist and leading Sri Lankan referee Aaqil Jamaldeen’s officiating at the game between Kandy SC and Havelocks will be reviewed today by former senior referees and Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR).

Havelocks Sports Club President Romesh Abeywickrema had written to SLR on the appointment of match referee Jamaldeen for the Kandy SC encounter on 16 January. Although Havelocks had written to SLR on 16 January, to date they have not got any acknowledgment of this, according to club officials. Havies protested Jamaldeen’s appointment citing personal reasons. The club had stated that his brother Arshard played for Kandy SC and his father, Nizam, was a former Head of the Referees Society who is closely associated with the Patron of the Kandy Sports Club. Due to this they wanted a change of referee for this encounter. 

However, no change was made by either SLR or the Referees Society and the game went ahead, with defending champions Kandy SC winning by a margin of 10 points.

On 19 January, as soon as their match against Kandy was over, Havelocks had once again written to SLR highlighting 12 purported errors committed by Jamaldeen which allegedly cost them the game. Further, they stated that they did not want Jamaldeen to be appointed for any future Havelocks encounters. Havelocks President Abeywickrema declared that these officials were responsible for killing the sport and as a result hardly any local spectators wanted to enjoy a game of rugby.

Speaking to the Daily FT, Abeywickrema said: “We need an equal field of play. We do not want any favours for us. Each year we lose nearly seven to eight players to other clubs. We put a lot of funds into our rugby and need a fair deal. We will wait for the review meeting.” 

Meanwhile, SLR President Lasitha Gunaratne responded by saying: “When Havies wanted a change in referee, we immediately forwarded the concerned mail to the Referees Society but they came back strongly and declined changing any of the officials on 17 January. As we were running out of time and the game was scheduled for the following day, we had no time to bring in an overseas referee. Aaqil was the number one referee as per the Referees Society. At that given time we had no alternative but to go ahead with the appointed referee for the game. Further, we brought in a Hong Kong referee for the CR&FC-Kandy SC, Police-CH and Navy-Army encounters. For CR&FC vs. Kandy SC we used the overseas referee as both sides were unbeaten at that time. We assigned the same foreign referee to all the clubs except Air Force. We will allow any future overseas referees to officiate Air Force games as well.” 

“The majority of clubs want to play their matches on Saturdays, other than Kandy, who want to play their home matches on Sundays. When three clubs play their encounters on a Saturday then the availability of referees too needs to be sorted out. A given referee can do only one game per day. On the SLR side, we have taken all action and every week we have a review meeting headed by three former referees - Roshan Deen, S.W. Chang and Dilroy Fernando. We will review and see if Aaqil had genuinely made any errors or done so on purpose and take further action after consulting with the Referees Society. Further, we also want the Referees Society to refrain from trying out new referees in league encounters but to test them out at lower division school encounters and then promote them according to their performances,” he added.

Gunaratne went on to say that other clubs had also written in saying they did not want certain referees.

“So if we listen and start changing referees, we will have no local referees and end up bringing overseas referees for all the games, which is costly and creates a bad image of local referees in the Asian region.”

Referees Society Head Tony Amit, speaking to the Daily FT, said: “We will be meeting with Havelocks and SLR officials and take action. Further, we are not in a position to change referees on the request of each club as we will run out of referees to officiate in Sri Lanka in addition to hurting our image with Asia Rugby (AR). We will go through the footage and see if Aaqil has made any mistakes on purpose or if they were due to human error and make a final decision. Further, we do not want any clubs to cite personal reasons and connections towards the game, which is not professional.”