Royal Recitals of beer stoppers and cigarettes-by Lalin Fernando

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For the first time since the Bradby began there will be no matches this year due to the Corona virus. To relieve the deep disappointment of Trinity and Royal the Sunday Island (15 November 2020) carried an extraordinary article by Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama (my cousin) ‘The Tale of the Beer Stopper and the Markowich Cigarette’. In it he claims Royal that won the Bradby in 1956. No amount of contradiction, persuasion or proof offered made him relent. (Disce nothing aut never Discede)

At the 1956 Bradby Royal was cut to pieces by Trinity in the first leg losing 15-0 (Colombo and in the Kandy return by 11-0.

There were many conspiracies Royalists hatched especially late Mahes Rodrigo, Nihal’s cousin, to win the Bradby but only on the field. Mahes would witness every Trinity match to nourish his agile rugby brain and plan his strategy and produce results, sometimes. Was this Nihal’s attempt together with the editor of the paper, coincidentally a Royalist, to reconstruct Bradby lore under cover of the dreadful Corona with Royal frolics with beer bottles and cigarettes in Kandy?

Nihal admits he knows little about Rugby but as a Prefect he must have known all about the Bradby. He had apparently gone to Kandy for the return Bradby, but as a member of the always power packed debating team that must have served as a nursery for Royal’s representatives muddling along at Diyawanna.

The tradition is to have a debate after the second leg of the Bradby. Nihal says Sarath Amunugama CCS (Ceylon Civil Service) and later Minister was in the Trinity team. Nihal’s cousin Eshin Fernando was in the 1954 debating team after playing in the Bradby that evening. In that debate Lalith Athulathmudali in winding up for Royal said of Trinity speaker (Fernando) ‘as for the last speaker the less said the better’. Typically gracious, oozing with subtle irony and Royal wit. Lalith had in 1953 beaten the former at the Public Schools Athletics in the under 16 years, 100 yards sprint.

Royal probably initiated this debating business too. It gave them a chance to win what it lost with regularity but not without excitement at rugby. Lakshman Kadirigamar and Lalith Athulathmudali were the great names to remember, as one followed the other to be President of the Oxford Union.

Royal may have declared they won the debate in 1956 and therefore inherited the Bradby too, hence Nihal’s inspired if wayward memory. Trinity would not grudge that or anything else to keep Royal’s ‘Hearts of Oak’ missing beats as Trinity in the Kandyan hills ‘Looks to the End’.

Nihal and Trinity team member Sarath Amunugama may have lit the scenic Peradeniya University later with their verbal pyrotechnics but the memories of both appear to be a bit wayward. Sarath in his biography ‘Kandyan ……. ‘recollects the hilarious goings on at Temple Trees in 1971 during the JVP insurgency. He was tickled silly to see his Trinity juniors Captains Denzil Kobbekaduwa and Anuruddha Ratwatte (reservist) manning Bren guns at the entrance! However Sarath like Nihal is a bit weak on dates. That insurgency began on 5 April 1971 not on 4 April as Sarath recalls. Royal won the Bradby in 1958 when both were in the university and not in 1956, whatever the debate was about.

Nihal goes on to say that at Royal the Monday after the return match was normal ‘except for expressions of jubilation at having twice defeated Trinity that rugby season’. Incredible! He goes on ‘However on Tuesday afternoon everything changed dramatically… there were no teachers to take classes… an emergency staff meeting had been convened There were no classes on Wednesday…..The staff were attending an all day staff meeting’.

Trinitians never knew that Royal takes the Bradby this deliriously, hallucinating a thundering thumping for victory.

Now at Trinity when the Bradby is won, life goes on as ‘normal’ on the following Monday and thereafter. After all, the famous shield was given by the Royal Principal Bradby to ensure that Royal did not give up the game. At Trinity, rugby was like mother’s milk at least 20 years before Royal took up the ‘rowdies’ game played by gentlemen (of Trinity). From 1952 to 1957 Royal could only score 13 points in a total of 12 games in 10 of which they never scored. Trinity had already decided to let Royal win but only in 1958! So what was going on at Royal during this extraordinary week in 1956?

Since they had actually been vaporized in 1956 one may think Royal was suffering from a community spread of mass concussion thinking at first that they had grabbed the Bradby. They nearly did that at Pallekelle 60 years on! Or had they realized they had misinterpreted the results and gone into lock down with the principal contemplating, could it be, hara kiri? Poor Royal. This was only a game.

Had Trinity known this could happen to their traditional and friendly rivals it would have accelerated its strategy of letting Royal win – to save the Bradby and Royal from sustained PTSD.

According to Nihal, still concussed or not, the actual reason for the Royal shut down was different. The Trinity Principal, Walter, had apparently sent his Royal counterpart de Silva a tiny parcel with a letter ‘congratulating’ Royal (odd word if not also rather comic after defeating Royal by an aggregate of 26-0) ‘on its performance ….. Together with a beer bottle stopper and a Markovitch cigarette’ adding with a light touch ‘don’t worry. Our boys will bring their own supplies’. (That week in 1956, Royal was due to accommodate the Trinitians for the Combined Schools match. Incidentally there were nine Trinitians in that XV). The letter continued not without irony ‘In any event they can’t afford these expensive brands”.

Whether these were the actual words used by a head master who was an Englishman, it was certainly not meant to drive the Royal principal nuts. Neither thought to use the telephone.

However the Royal Principal was a bit short on humour. He had misunderstood the Trinity Principal’s light hearted banter. He may have thought beer bottle stoppers and cigarette butts were deserving of hell and damnation. After nearly two days of what must have been self inflicted stress and agony, he sacked a selection of prefects among the players and debaters who went up to Kandy, including Nihal.

At Trinity if there had been some mischief and punishment was required, the Principal would have asked the boys responsible to own up. People like wing three and Public Schools’ Athletic coloursman Vernon Botejue would have fronted for the lot. It was a pity that the Royal principal despite being an old boy did not have the same confidence in his boys. His preference was for command responsibility and communal punishment. Had he but spoken to the Trinity principal he would have realized he had raised a storm in a beer bottle that had a cigarette stuck in it.

However there was actually such an incident but poor Nihal got the Bradby result wrong, after 64 years. The Bradby survived. The 1956 results are inviolate. Trinity won. The leaving certificates of the sacrificed stated they were Royal Prefects. All’s well.