The passing of a great teacher and man. Thailand.

Last Friday I had to go into my school to get some paperwork. While waiting for the paperwork a lovely lady Miss Pat informed me that one of our sports teachers had passed away early in the morning.

Ajarn Siriwat was only 49 years old and died from a heart problem, he was the coach of our schools Assumption College footsal team and also the coach of Ubon Ratchathani’s representative team. On Thursday during training he remarked to other teachers that he had chest pains.



I wasn’t a great friend and won’t pretend to be, Master Siriwat didn’t speak much English and I don’t speak a lot of Thai. I probably only spoke to him ten or so times as in conversation when the Assumption team was playing footsal and that was with bad Thai spoken by me and some English.

I would always greet Master Siriwat with a traditional Thai wai and also a good morning or hello when I seen him. I don’t do this with many Thai teachers as many are sour faced or unhappy looking but Master Siriwat always had a smile and gave me a wai back or said hello as well.

His wife is the head of all of the English departments, Mrs. Wanai. She too is an incredibly lovely lady and is obviously distraught at the sudden passing of her partner. I can only say from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry for the loss of your husband and my condolences go to you and your son and daughter.

There is a 5 day funeral rite being held at their house which has been packed full of mourners who have come to pay their respect to a generous and kind man.

A chapter of monks comes to the house one or more times each day to chant from the Abhidharma, sometimes holding the bhusa yong, a broad ribbon, attached to the coffin. Food is offered to the officiating monks (before noon) as part of the merit-making for the deceased.

The food offered in the name of the dead is known as Matakabhatta from mataka ("one who is dead"). The formula of presentation is:

Reverend Sirs, we humbly beg to present this mataka food and these various gifts to the Sangha. May the Sangha receive this food and these gifts of ours in order that benefits and happiness may come to us to the end of time.

One of the very sad things was Master Siriwat was coaching the Ubon Racthathani footsal team in a huge tournament that they were due to start playing on Saturday, one day after his death. It obviously left his players devastated.

Everyone has pulled together in the spirit for Master Siriwat and there are many supporters to cheer Ubon on at the tournament.





The footsal team was coached by Master Siriwat’s friend but he was there in spirit with his son holding his picture to help motivate the players.

The players huddling and doing the team chant with Master Siriwat in the middle of the action.

Ubon’s goal keeper Mr. Boom.

The game was fast and furious and a lot of hard challenges being applied.


Ubon with a shot at goal. They scored!


Ubon with another chance, this time no goal.


A free kick just outside the goal ring. No goal.


Goal, goal, goal the boys were happy and ran to the bench to touch Master Siriwat’s picture.

At half time the boys got a pep talk and Master Siriwat watched on.

The news of Master Siriwat’s passing has spread and news crews were on hand to interview his son and daughter, they are being incredibly brave and mature beyond their years.

Ten minutes into the second half with the score at 3-2 in favour of Ubon there was a huge collision of bodies involving Ubon’s goal keeper Boom and an opposition player. I heard the smack of bodies after Boom left his goal line to challenge a free ball; I was a good 40 metres away. Both players were down for the count. I thought maybe a bit of gamesmanship but that quickly disappeared when people where running everywhere and towels being brought out to stop the flow of blood.

I made my way around and found Boom had more than likely broken his nose (now confirmed), the other guy had a good gash on his head as well.





















The funny or silly thing was even though an ambulance was on standby at the tournament, the driver couldn’t be found anywhere so Boom was piled into a car to go to the hospital.

The end score was 8-3 to Ubon Ratchathani. The kids played fantastically well, considering everything that had happened just a day before. For kids so young to take such a tragedy and turn it into a motivation is hard.

They Ubon team played again today but were beaten 14-12 and there number 1 goal keeper who was out after having his nose reset told me from his hospital bed tonight he was going to play tomorrow, I encouraged him to do this.

I have broken my nose so many times I lost count, the first few times I had it reset and then I gave up and now it is just slightly bent and suits my crooked head. When you play football it was easy to have your nose re-broken and a little cotton wool stop the excess blood and all is okay. Like I said to Boom “at worst you could break your nose again but at the end of the tournament you can get it straightened and back to looking like normal.
I will update the scores for Ubon over the coming days, I hope they can pull off a fairytale tournament win for their late coach Master Siriwat.

Brunty.