It was a sporting rivalry where one cheekily accused the other of snobbery, and in turn got told off for possessing just a pretty face. Then the two sets of boys went into a ruck, gallantly risked losing both—the stiff-necked highbrow and the drop-dead Greek God looks. What flourished was rugby in Kolkata. That was till the clean-cuts started disappearing from the scene, leaving the snobs to stare at the backs of secretly-respected rivals.
There wasn’t much silverware up for grabs then, just pretty girls to impress. And as a 15-year-old, that counted as mighty important.
While La Martiniere Old Boys (LMOB) maintains uppity authority over schools rugby in the eastern metropolis, the Armenians are back in action this year with a new crop, signalling the revival of Armenian rugby.
How a group of boys who’ve never held the rugby ball back in Iran, Iraq or Armenia, came to Kolkata’s Armenian College and transformed themselves into a feared unit beats all scepticism.
A history that can be traced back to 1890—when the Old Armenians Club kick-started rugby and carried it over to the college hosting Armenian children fleeing persecution in different parts of the world. And it continues to inspire as the team returns to where it belongs: in the centre of the mainstream. The first youngsters—all 7,8 year-olds and too young to play—arrived in 1999, a year after the Armenian seniors last won the All-India. Eight years on, they have grown up strong and sturdy.
The National U-19 Rugby Sevens in its inaugural edition in Mumbai witnessed a fresh batch of Armenians lift the cup, and an apt summation came from national coach David Wiggins, who while only in his second week in India noted, “The important thing is how everyone was happy to watch them win. The Armenians are a special team.”
Handed a rugby ball—alongside a sporting spread of hockey, football and cricket from Day 1 of school—the Armenians are known to pick rugby over the rest. Maybe rugby picks them, like in Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat at Hogwarts, though there’s no ceremony here, merely rough tackles.
School coach David Purdy guesses that for a group of children wanting to desperately prove their worth, rugby is handy.
Taking Armenian rugby to greater heights is Emil Vartazarian, India’s charismatic fullback, who graduated from school ranks and was part of the last batch that did duty for the Mayo Road club. A regular in the national team, he can claim to have made the most of his stay in India. “We seem to excel because of the physicality. Also we playing for clubs at 15-16, so we start thinking like adults,” he says.
“The main thing is to instil control in them—because they are very physical. It’s a job to discipline them,” says Purdy.
Playing with unique flair, the Armenian school boys picked their maiden U-19 national title—soon after beating an army side in a warm-up game in Kolkata.
Recalling the last few days of the Armenian supremacy in early ‘90s, team-member Supratik Sen says, “The camaraderie’s huge. We’d sleep, eat, date, fight, have fun together and that showed on the pitch.” Rivals feared them, adds Sen—only the second Bengali to have played for the Armenians—the first being his uncle Col Dasgupta who played alongside the club’s legend Ashram Sookias.
The rivalry between the affluent LMOB and the rugged Armenians might have started hotting up 70 years ago, but Sookias was immortalised after he had twenty stitches sew up his head after being kicked at during a game at Bombay Gymkhana in the ‘60s.

... contd.