The Club's Results

The first race of the regatta saw LMBC coxes racing FaT. LMBC were drawn on the Wren station, with the FaT 2nd May VIII Punters crew on the Paddocks station. It was neck-and-neck most of the way down the Trinity Reach, but there was a large amount of blade clashing in the Gut due to the necessity of First and Third having to avoid a puntload of tourists, achieved by steering hard to the Wren side of the river. A shoving match took place, ending with both boats pointing at the bank, with First and Third nearer the turning point. A swift disentanglement was followed by a sprint to the Bridge of Sighs, and a quick spin by both crews. The race back to Trinity was reasonably uneventful, save for the Maggie tactic of having supporters on the bank grab ahold of their punt and drag it along. In spite of this, FaT M2 managed to win by the merest fraction of a length, sailing gracefully under the bridge to applause from the partisan crowd. (Matt)

The "Semi-final" (as in "the first half of the final") saw Graham pit his wits against the best of the LMBC Punting Brigade. Despite us being drawn on the favourable Wren station, LMBC surged into a lead of about a length early on in the race, and despite a good push through the Gut and along LMBC reach, LMBC opened the gap to about a length and a half by the Bridge of Sighs ... (Matt)

... whereupon the Red ones overshot the spinning point slightly as both crews changed punters. With Matt on the deck, First and Third executed a near-textbook spinning manoeuvre (via the northern wall) a couple of lengths upstream of the LMBC punt and now we had the lead. Despite a repeat of the running along the bank antics from the Maggie team, First and Third managed to win comfortably by a length. (Matt)

Some underhand cheating by one of the Maggie "women" [sam, trying to grab our punt pole] resulted in him accidently tipping his own punter in, leaving us with the free run of the course. However, in true sporting style we waited for the rescue attempt, and resumed when they had sorted themselves out and caught up. The division had to be paused again halfway down the "reach", as Maggie tried to run down some tiny, innocent, defenceless ducklings. Much squealing and 'ooooh they're soo cute!' later, we got going again. FaT were first under Kitchen bridge, But an excellenct spinning technique by maggie saw them take the lead. It was pretty evenly matched down the home straight, but another desperate cheating manouevre [trying to pull themsleves along the bank] saw the Red Scum lose their paddle - which apparently makes quite a contribution to the speed of the punt. We stormed ahead and pulled out a victory from the brink of defeat. Ra Ra 1st&3rd! (*Yea* we did)

We got off to an interesting start - when we were accused of stealing the punt by the puntman. We were forced to easy and return to the start. After a bit of persuading, we managed to convince the puntman that we were meant to have the punt out and got back going again - unfortunately, the Maggie boys were already on the finishing straight - so we ended up losing by about 5/6 of the course. Oh well, never mind! (Richard)