GIVE ME AN R !!!
R-O-Y-A-L ! How many times would you
have heard this throughout the school year? Be it at sports events, functions
and various other extracurricular events. But there is a time when you hear it,
enjoy it and yell it the most-thats the Big Match Time. The pride and honour you
feel when showing your true Royal Colours and shouting that yell is
inexplicable. A warm feeling tickles your spine when you hear this yell. You
feel it you enjoy it. You YELL it!
The Royal - Thomian has been quite an
experience for me. Of the eight years I have been a student of this school I am
extremely proud to say that I haven't missed it a single time. The first term in
the school year is the best for me (not only because of the absence of school
term tests!) but because of the "Match Fever". Symptoms include: shouting my
head off, putting flags out of cars and (very accidentally) the flag hitting a
poor pedestrian or two, jumping into girls schools and trying to set them on
fire, just to name a few.
Royal is all about more than 170 years
of tradition and the Big Match offers no less. There are many traditional and
"must - have" events during the build-up to the Royal - Thomian; The Royal-Thomian
debate is one of the most interesting out of them. Anecdotes worth gems and
verbal gaffes (the latter coming only from the fish of course.) are aplenty in
the debate. One such gem being on how St. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia got its
more appropriate and very descriptive nickname : Thora, related by none other
than Akvan Gajanayaka, a past Editor of this infamous souvenir. The story goes
like this, in the old days when St. Thomas' was a school of about TWO HUNDRED
(200) students (it still is if you don't count the fish) their Boy's or fish
tent was vastly out - numbered by Royals Boy's tent. The Thomians looking for a
solution to this, set about looking for supporter to fill the Boy's ent. As they
were stupid enough to look for supporters in Colombo the mission was highly
unsuccessful. This being so, they came down (very close) to earth and (almost)
got sensible (with a pinch of common sense)and looked around in their own
little, remote hamlet and found the only people in the world good enough to
support them, their home-ground fishermen. On the day of the match the Thomians
Fishermen's tent was filled with bare - bodies of fishermen and a student or
two. As soon as the match commenced the student or two started yelling "Up and
at 'em S. Thomas!". The humble fisherfolk who could not understand a word of
English wondered what to do and stood dumbfounded. Suddenly the Chief fisherman,
wishing to honour the agreement that they would support this "iskolay", shouted
the only thing he knew; Go Thora Go!!
Getting back to Royal-Thomian
traditions, every policeman's headache, the Cycle Parade takes one of the top
spots. Banned for a number of years it was re-instated last year in a full scale
after a round of begging in the Principal's Office. The Parade was a huge
success with a number of "parpare" bands, thousands of Royal Blue and Gold
flags, eight-thousand students dancing in a frenzy and about a million cops
breaking into a sweat. The dear opponents of Royal College took this once a life
time opportunity to dress in their funeral colours and visit Colombo from their
remote village.
All in all the Royal-Thomian is one of
the richest fiestas in the world. It's not only about the eleven players and
eleven fish out there, it's also about the nine thousand boys in the Royal Boy's
tent and fifteen thousand fishermen in the Thomain's fish tent, it's also about
the Principal of Royal College Colombo 7 and the warden at S. Thomas' it's about
an unignorable stench coming from the Thora side, it's about meeting old friends
depending on whose side you are on. And ir's about running to the pitch to
celebrate a Right Royal Century (and getting hammered by the guys who wear those
black uniforms and tie their black handkerchief around their head for some
reason or the other and pretend to be security guards) And most of all it's
about celebrating a RIGHT ROYAL VICTORY!!!
Go Royal !
SG
Grade 9 J
Royal College Colombo 7
Back
