The Rugby Craze and the Most Memorable Detention Class

The Rafflesian Rugby Team in their Green, White and Black Jerseys

Raffles Institution excelled in Rugby, the whole School was crazy over it. We were frequent champions of the Inter-School Rugby Tournament sharing the spotlight with St Andrew's School. The rivalry was so intense that there is a special tournament between the two schools call the Kiwi Cup to this day. 

Rugby was so popular that we had inter-class tournaments for every standard. In 1966, Sec 3BSc won the Inter-Class Secondary 3 rugby tournament. We won every single game in that tournament. We had a formidable team which included school players like, Chey Chor Wai, Quek Seng Yeow, Lee Cheong Kuan, Hia Hui Kim and others just as fierce such as Chong Huai Seng, Foo Moo Pao (hooker during scrums), Chen Wen, Leong Teep Khee, Rajan and Lim Kin Chew

The class Rugby team trounced our football nemesis Sec 3A Science 20-0 in the very first game of the competition. Outstanding in that game was Teep Khee. He scored the last touchdown but what was more memorable was he prevented a Sec 3A touchdown by grabbing the waistband of an opponent and nearly dropping his trousers. Seng Yeow converted all 4 of our touchdowns.  Rajan scored the first touchdown of the game.

Sec 3B Sc rugby team handed the same 20-0 defeat to the next challenger, Sec. 3C Sc and continued the tournament undefeated to eventually win the Sec. 3 championship.

Imagine our tremendous disappointment when in 1966 when there was the Rugby Inter-School finals played at the Padang, RI vs St Andrews, the whole class was not allowed to attend the match. 

The whole school got to see that match sans Sec 3B Science; instead our class was placed on detention. Apparently a few of our classmates were caught by Asst Principal, George Sobreilo, in Canteen Two behind the Annex E building when the lesson was still on in class. There was a huge commotion and some of us who escaped being caught, rushed into class to tell everyone of the offence. Instead of punishing the few, Mr Sobreilo who probably knew some had escaped, decided to ban the whole class from the Rugby Finals.

Our monitor, Cheong Moon Foo, went to see Mr Charanjit Singh who appealed on our behalf, to the Asst Principal, Mr George Sobreilo to give us a reprieve to no avail. Poh Seng remembered that when Charanjit broke the bad news to us, he said that he understood Mr Sobreilo’s position and if it had been him, he would also not budge.

Well guess what happened next? All hell broke loose in our classroom that afternoon. We started off by burning papers in the classroom and inside our flip top desk then closing the top to cause smoke. Then screaming and trumpets blaring took place. We had a field day doing shuttle runs and standing broad jumps. Nobody heard us since our classroom at the Annex E block was quite far away from the school office, the teachers’ common room and the prefects’ room.

The piéce de résistance was when we were the only class to attend the flag lowering ceremony before dismissal. The rest of the school was dismissed from the Padang after the match. Our class was at one end of the field and there was Mr George Sobreilo waiting at the flagpole. We assembled slowly, while he was waiting, and we decided to do a slow-march towards him. All of us saw him waving frantically, gesticulating trying to get us to hurry but we took our time. He detained us another 10 minutes thereafter. Never mind, we had our revenge! On hindsight and with 2020 vision, this was a most momentous, one of a kind experience for all of us whereas there would be many more Rugby finals to come.

All the above occurred on the 14 Oct 1966 when the Rugby Finals was played. It was a disappointing defeat for us and that defeat was graciously recorded by the Rafflesian Times. 

The next year, 1967, the KIWI Cup Rugby tournament was inaugurated so that the two top Rugby Schools, Raffles Institution and St Andrew's School could hold healthy competition showcasing their rivalry. The challenge trophy was donated by the then New Zealand High Commissioner to Singapore. The Cup was intensely  fought for until 1978. No one knew the reason why it stopped. In 2006, passionate alumni from both schools appealed to reinstate the tournament with the encouragement of the New Zealand High Commissioner, HE Richard Grant who donated a new KIWI Cup.  The latest KIWI Cup competition was won by RI in 2019. (Click on KIWI to read an account)

In RI, we had a cheer team comprising the beautiful older girls in the Pre-University classes. Mr P K Hernon was teacher in charge. Quek Li Lian, Ng Lee Ngoh, Joy Ee, Veronica Chew were some of the members. To be sure the boys in our class did not just yearn to see the game but also to watch our big sisters in their short skirts.

After a disappointing defeat in Inter-school rugby finals against St. Andrew School by a narrow score in 1966, Philip Liau embarked on an RI specific mission which he code named “We Shall Build Ironmen”.  There were posters all over the school promoting this mission.  His initiative paid off big time in 1969 when RI won the rugby championship in almost every category contested including the memorable RI A team vs RI B team in the very historic 7 a side all RI finals.  

Contributed by Chen Wen, Poh Seng and Lionel