The an­nu­al Bel­mont ver­sus St Mary's re­union match which has been run­ning for the past 25 years soon af­ter the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions may be no more. Af­ter the game on Thurs­day, one of the or­gan­is­ers, Ken Butch­er, re­vealed that the match was like­ly to be the last as a new for­mat has been pro­posed for next year. "A pro­pos­al was made by the joint or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee of Bel­mont and St Mary's that hav­ing com­plet­ed 25 years, and be­cause of the age of the play­ers, they want­ed to leave a lega­cy by chang­ing the for­mat," said Butch­er.

"The for­mat it should take would be to in­vite, in the first in­stance, Queen's Roy­al Col­lege and Fa­ti­ma, and make it a whole day tour­na­ment af­fair on St Mary's grounds on the Sat­ur­day af­ter Car­ni­val. "Con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to oth­er schools in the North based on dis­cus­sions in the forth­com­ing year."

Butch­er al­so not­ed that any sur­plus funds gen­er­at­ed from the ex­er­cise will be equal­ly di­vid­ed among the par­tic­i­pat­ing schools. "In this way, the old boys will be giv­ing back some­thing to their re­spec­tive schools," he point­ed out.

"The com­mit­tee has al­so con­sid­ered ex­pand­ing the tour­na­ment to in­clude the south­ern schools and we will for­mat it to in­clude the age brack­ets 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. "At the end of the day, the tour­na­ment will cul­mi­nate in a North-South game in a par­tic­u­lar age brack­et to be de­ter­mined."