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SLR Council Members
By Shamseer Jaleel
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Rizly Ilyas
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Former Peterite and Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) current President Rizly Ilyas will be in charge of the SLR for two more years in tandem. He was elected at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) which took place at the National Olympic House in Colombo on Saturday.
The notable inclusion in the committee is the return of former Sri Lanka Air Force “Iron Man” Nalin de Silva making a comeback after several years. The former crack number 8 who represented the national team for well over 15 years will come in as the Deputy President. Earlier Nalin de Silva served SLRFU as its Secretary. Nizam Jamaldeen will be their new Secretary.
Speaking to Daily FT, Rizly Ilyas said: “As President in my second term my committee and I will look forward to strengthening our local club tournaments specially the sevens. We had a very productive meeting and SLR presentation with Chairman Sports Council, Arjuna Ranatunga who immediately picked up the news for SLR to circus on the sevens stating that Sri Lanka had a good chance of winning a medal in the Asian tournaments.
“At SLR we have been discussing this before and this is not new and my team and I will achieve this in the short term and Olympic and World Series entry in the long term.”
Speaking further, Rizly said: “We see a virus growing in some of the clubs and a very negative attitude by them towards the SLR I believe strong remedies will be taken to isolate these individuals or clubs SLR will look at releasing contracts of all the players who are involved with these clubs so that player base in other clubs will increase and as professional players the player should not suffer. SLR will be open for any discussion to support changes that are needed within the powers given in the SLR constitution, we will not entertain any political interference moving forward.”
He said opportunities will be given to clubs and provincial unions to propose any fair and acceptable change for better not for individuals who aspire changes to control power when they have served their term.
Rizly ended by saying: “We have a good legal adviser Panduka Keerthinanda and through him we will build up strong legislation to run the affairs of SLR for the betterment of the game and rugby should be the winner. Moving forward, SLR will immediately look at starting a series of Seven’s tournaments after the Mercantile Sevens which would be built up for the national squad training.”
Newly-appointed committee
