Kandy District Hockey Association has finalized all arrangements to begin tournaments. Kandy District Hockley Association under the leadership of R. Maheswaran and secretary M. Ashroff with the rest of the committee has planned and finalized tournaments for men and women at club level, soon after the greenlight is given the tournaments will begin. The men’s tournament will be for a trophy in memory of M. S. Jainudeen the first secretary of Kandy hockey and women’s for Zohara Jumar trophy the first woman to lead the country in hockey
Hockey in Kandy dates far back as 1907, it came in when the Indian Rajput Regiments occupied the Kandy Military Barracks, currently known as Police Barracks. During that time St. Anthony’s College was housed at the present St. Sylvester’s College premises and they used the barracks square for all their sports. The boys of that era felt drawn to the game themselves and tried their hand at knocking the ball about with a borrowed stick or two.
The fearless youngsters found some places vacant whenever the military men did not turn up for their games. In 1909, one of the St. Anthony’s College players Charlie Hamilton, who was a little ten-year-old prodigy, played as centre half.This eagle heart midget was one of those who had learnt the game the hard way when in the company of the Indian stalwarts. That year a team picked from Kandy travelled down to Colombo to play against the Colombo Municipal Council and Bloomfield ACC.
The first match was drawn, each side scoring a goal, and the hero of these two games was Charlie Hamilton, whose play had evoked repeated rounds of applause. The anti-climax was that after the teams returned from Colombo to Kandy, Charlie took ill suddenly and died on November 5, 1909. The game then died a natural death. Once again in 1926, Kandy Sports Club with Europeans started a tournament and in a few years the game faded away.
Doing a little research, I found that the first “Bully Off” in Kandy was in the year 1907 at the Bogambara grounds, when the two clubs Kandy Sports Club and Industrial School Team met. The captains of these two pioneer clubs were Europeans S.R. Hammer and R. Sparks. These two clubs played regularly and had opposition from the Regiments that were stationed in Kandy.
In 1944, the Kandy District Hockey Association conducted one of its finest tournaments where fourteen teams participated in the league. The teams were St. Anthony’s”Hotspurs”, Trinity “Rabbits”, Kingswood, Police, CLI(Army), Kandy Rovers, Sampans (Army), Blue Jays (Army), All Anglo Indians,Parklands (Army), Indians Legionaries (Army), and South East Command Team of Lord Mountbatten’s staff
In this tournament Kandy Rovers having a better side in their ranks, including Philip Buultjens one of the top sportsman, Douglas Bartholomeusz, F.H.B. Wood, Sam Elhart, Victor Ratnawale, H.W. Bobby Jayaweera. This team had the distinction of winning the league championship and also played that year in the Connor Cup and the Andriesz Shield tournaments in Colombo. According to history in 1944 M.S. Jainudeen organized a match to help the war effort and it was a great success. The game was played at the Trinity College grounds atAsgiriya.
During the next few years, the standard of hockey was kept up and in 1950 two coaches of that era PT Rajan presented a trophy in his name and MS Jainudeen presented the runners-up trophy. Kandy League was gradually making their presence felt and won the league championship under George Mant the man from Kandy who introduced the game to Matale. At one time he was Kandy’s secretary.
Then came the 7-a-side tournament for the KPMM Seyed Ahamed Challenge Cup and the Dr. VHL Anthonisz Challenge Cup for the knock-out tournament.
Some of the others who gave a big hand for the game were Rev. Fr. Robert M. Perera, SR Hamer, GH Robinson, K. de Lanerolle, Dr. V HL Anthonisz, George de Saram, Fr. Dom George, EL Fernando, RB Wijekoon,P. Thangavelu, Paul Jeyaraj, Leslie Handunge, S. Rupasinghe, IM Anver, Later Roy de Silva, Rohan Wijenayake, MalcomPerera, M.H. Marikar, Lakshman Seneviratne (DIG).R. Maheswaran, M. Ashroff.
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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