Queen's tackle British test

ROWING:QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY will test themselves against the likes of Cambridge and Oxford Brookes at the British University Championships this weekend. It will provide a good formline for other Irish crews, as the Queen's senior eight finished behind UCD at the Irish University Championships, and could only finish third behind a UCD/Old Collegians composite and Commercial at Queen's own regatta last weekend.

Mark Fangen-Hall, the Queen’s coach, is hopeful his top eight can make the final this weekend. He said he was “disappointed but not worried” by the performances last weekend, pointing out that many of his relatively small contingent had double and treble commitments on the Friday and were “shattered” on the Saturday.

Queen’s regatta exhibited the beautiful Castlewellan Forest Park to best effect and gave a fillip to the rising star that is Lisa Dilleen – she beat the outstanding senior of the moment, Sanita Puspure for the first time. Dilleen, along with Laura D’Urso, will represent Ireland at the junior regatta in Munich in two weeks.

Seán Jacob and Con Collis, the Old Collegians from the winning men’s eight at Queen’s, will compete at Wallingford Regatta in England this weekend as a double scull and as part of an elite four with James Lindsay-Fynn and Danny Harte. The original aim of entering a quadruple proved impossible, but the athletes are planning to form a quadruple for Henley Royal Regatta in early July.

A group of top Irish rowers will take part in a training camp at the National Rowing Centre in Cork this weekend.

Off the water, the recently released Strategic Plan ticks the boxes on many of the aims progressive rowing people agree on.

However, the document does have a “mom and apple pie” feel about it. Worse still, it sometimes veers into jargon. Consider this as an aim: “Rebuild Rowing Ireland’s public profile and commercial potential by informing and managing media expectation of Rowing Ireland’s performance.”

Huh? If this translates as getting better coverage, then the simplest move is to have one person at each event whose job is to get the results, collate them and get them quickly to people in the media who might use them.