EVEN WITHOUT the veil of Corrib mist, crystal gazers looking to take some pointers from the 21st Tribesmen Head of the River in Galway on Saturday were left poring over a string of ambiguous race results.
Makeshift crews and steering errors down the twisting 4 1/2 mile course raised as many questions about potential championship crews as it did answers. The exception was predictably in the Men's Open Eights division where the current title-holders Neptune comfortably took first and second places using first-time crew combinations.
With a senior squad of 18 to play with, coach Peter Buckley sent out a mix and match selection, moving Denis Crowley up to the stroke seat in the stronger `A' boat. Rating 34 strokes a minute for most of the race, they came through in 13 minutes 10 seconds with power still in reserve. Neptune `B', stroked by Martin Murphy, raced through the Defence Forces on the line to finish five seconds later, and it leaves Buckley with the problem of selecting a first crew for the London Head.
Trinity's own tentative goals for Henley received a boost in Galway with their time of 13.19. Club captain Mark Pollock has put last year's title disappointment down to racing crews before they could row. Nevertheless, third in the eights had followed an earlier victory with James Lindsay-Flynn over the Under-23 international pair and a strong performance in the Trinity Open Four.
Last year's championship crew, stroked by William Gilbert, stayed in touch with the two coxless fours, but the show belonged to the lightweight internationals Tony O'Connor, Neville Maxwell, Sam Lynch and the stand-in for the day, Paul Hannery.
Two miles into the race and the internationals had already ploughed into a reed bank, collided with rocks and narrowly missed a marker pole. Once in their stride though, the four quickly rubbed out the deficit and set to work building a nine-second cushion over Commercial. "We just went all out from the start and only slowed down when we were hitting things," said Lynch afterwards.
With early crosswinds and a high river level, the four was joined in the reeds by a good number of the 340 boats racing. Ireland's Under-23 women's pair of Debbie Stack and Vanessa Lawrenson succumbed and saw Shandon's intermediates Jane O'Connell and Casey O'Gorman pass them by to end one of rowing's longest unbeaten runs by 14 seconds.
However, the biggest upset belonged to the UCG Women's Open Eight which exposed the `invincible' UCDL crew to be relatively fallible. Two weeks ago last summer's Henley winners finished the Women's London Head down in 32nd place and the Stack/ Lawrenson element is noticeably absent, in spite of new recruits from Berkeley College, USA, and Neptune. By contrast a big UCG crew have been strengthened by the return of Heather Boyle and Nessa Foley from Trinity, and they were able to under rate UCDL, to win by five seconds.
Niall Byrne fought his way through to the front of a high-class sculling field in what may have been a precursor to the national trials in May. With places likely to be up for grabs in the quad scull and a double, the Commercial sculler passed his clubmate Emmet O'Brien to stake a claim with a time of 15 minutes 42 seconds, three seconds faster than rival Gearoid Towey.
