Renowned rugby coach Sanath Martis has been appointed as the national coach by Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) from last week. He will be in charge of the national team that will be in training in preparation for the Division I Asia Rugby Championship to be held in Colombo from April 30 to May 5 at the Race Course ground.
This championship will see teams from Qatar, Kazakhstan, India and Sri Lanka in action. Sri Lanka has a good chance to prove their stature and finish on top.
Martis’ appointment as the national coach was made by the technical committee of SLR while Dushantha Lewke will be the coach of the forwards as well as the strength and conditioning of the team while Nilfer Ibrahim will coach the back division players. This team of experienced coaches should see the Sri Lanka team rise once again to the top rank as it was some eleven years ago.
Sanath Martis has devoted his life to rugby coaching and will continue to do so to see Sri Lanka rugby has reached the top grade once again. He started his career at Isipathana and played in the under13, 15 and the first fifteen teams as a hooker. He has also gone on to play for the Sri Lanka under-24 team as a hooker.
He then joined CR & FC and played in the under-20 and 24 teams and toured Hong Kong under the captaincy of Rohan Abeykoon. While at Isipathana Martis coached their under-13 and 15 teams and these junior teams have ended up champions and runners-up during 1987.
When Isipathana was being coached prominently by OWR Perera who took Isipathana to high levels, Martis was invited to assist him in 1988 to 1992. Under the leadership of Sudesh Abeysinghe Isipathana emerged as champions and again under the leadership of Champika Nishantha Isipathana won the triple in 1992 with Martis being the assistant coach to Perera.
Martis was then invited to coach Kurunegala RFC and St. Anne’s College in 1993.
“It was (MP) Johnston Fernando who invited me to take over and see that these two sides finish on top at that time. Kurunegala RFC improved and was promoted to the A division in 1995,” said Martis.
Martis took over the coaching of Wesley College from l997 to 2000 and coached CR the following year. Then from 2002 to 2004 he was back to coach Isipathana.
After having noticed the dedication and good work carried out by Martis, St. Peter’s College invited Martis to take over in 2005 and up to 2011 St. Peter’s won many trophies.
Royal College then invited Martis to coach them from 2014 for four years when Royal won the league and the Bradby Shield twice during that time.
Martis has also coached Havelock SC team for six years and saw to it that they won the knock-out tournament after a lapse of 34 years and finished as runners-up in the league tournament.
“I was the assistant coach of the national team in 2012 when Namal Rajapaksa was the captain of the team. The national coach was Phil Greening from the United Kingdom,” said Martis.
“I don’t have any intentions of migrating and I want to serve the Sri Lanka national rugby players for as long as possible,” said Martis.
“I also advice Sri Lanka Rugby to re-introduce foreign players with club teams so that our players will learn how to tackle the bigger players, especially when playing against other national teams,” advised Martis.
