The Club's Results

Not fantastic. Despite a reasonable row down and a better row back, we struggled to find togetherness and hence didn't fare particularly well. (Rich)

An awesome result with a win in S4, beating Caius and Emma on the way! We had a really solid row, at low-ish rate, with Caius directly behind. Although we lost ground through a bad start, we kept our cool and pushed off them constantly - a very useful skill for Bumps rowing! (Rich)

Buoyed immensely by the return of the pwerful Al Fisher from trialling we set about this race with real purpose.

Caius started behind us and clearly closed over the first few minutes. However, our race strategy of dividing the evet into 90 second intervals worked wonders and we banged down a great rhythm into the breeze to clearly move away.

We had been following an outrageously tough training programme but this proved that our fitness had come on immensely since the the Fairbairns as we we clearly beat crews that had been 40 and 20 seconds ahead of us then. (Ingram)

Although we had a really good first half, our second half let us down (this was possibly due to me being far from 100% and hitting some kind of 'wall').

At least we had a better weekend that Robinson, who succeeded in losing their fin, not stopping and ploughing straight into the outside of a corner, thus totally trashing their nice new Janousek! There but for the grace of God... (Rich)

The race was unbelievable: Maggie got off well and were clearly really going for it. They were almost upon us out of Ditton and we were clinging on all the way up the reach. Under the Railway Bridge they had a large amount of overlap, but their cox continued to miss as she steered for us. We scented victory, found rhythm and rowed away. A testament to the gritty nature of the crew: awesome. (Rich)

An easier day: with more confidence we held Maggie off with reasonably little difficulty before they were bumped at Ditton by Caius. (Rich)

Our defence of the headship came to an end. Caius in the end were just too powerful, and whereas we pushed off Maggie when they got close, Caius just kept coming, bumping us out of Ditton. Min-numbing, total dejection. Gutted. Just gutted. (Rich)

We faced an action replay of Wednesday. Except that this time they just managed to make contact and our fate was sealed. Annoying, given that we had escaped once, and were well inside distance on Caius at the time, being a very fit crew. Ah well, next year hey? (Rich)

What a weekend. The fact that we rowed like shit and were beaten by Colleges like Robinson seemed small in comparison! In fairness, the preparation probably really didn't help. Oh well, we 'place-warmed' quite effectively, coming in at double our start place! Moral: I reckon some weekends are just destined to be shit! (Rich)

Rich has done justice to the immediate preparation but forgets the week leading up to the race.
He had had to return home and left me as de facto captain and in charge of training. Big mistake.

We were all totally knackered from our overtraining all term (6 land, 7 water seesions / week!) and a bit down after the Headship-loss. I therefore decided that it was more important to restore morale. Ably assisted at first by Glass, Fisher and Goodson and later by most of the club, a daily routine of afternoon football followed by Maypole drinks followed by Beer, Pizza, Beer, Pringles, Beer, Colin McRae and Beer was begun. Typical finishing times were 5am. By the end of the week we had achieved two of the club's finest achievements: The Beeramid; and modifying OddBinss stocking policy for Heineken.

However, we weren't getting much better at rowing and I think it is fair to say that even without all the other disasters would not have broken 100th. (Ingram)

It was Bottoms Up, not Oddbins. Clearly the slab market was not as buoyant in later years, as BU has closed down! (Graham Fisher)