Rowing: News round-up In a move which has sent shock waves through Irish rowing, the high performance director of the sport has announced he will not be seeking reappointment.

Richard Parr, a Canadian who who took up his post in January 2003 and always stressed one of his primary goals was the best possible Ireland performance at Beijing in 2008, said yesterday he would not seek reappointment when his present contract ends at the end of this year.

"I wanted to restructure the job but the board appointed to review the job and my position were reluctant to do that," Parr said.

Both Parr and the president of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union, Frank Durkin, agree there was no rancour in the parting of ways, but big questions arise about the direction Irish rowing will take.

Interviews for the new head coach were being held yesterday, and while Parr was prepared to effectively play second fiddle to the self-described "dominant" personality of the outgoing head of coaching, Thor Nilsen, he may have expected to be more in charge with the new coach. It would seem this was not on offer.

Questions arise as to the wisdom of appointing a new HPD when the very usefulness of the job has been brought into question. Sam Lynch, the athletes representative for 2004, has strong views on the issue.

"The whole role has to be looked at," he said yesterday. "I don't think a high performance director is necessary for such a small group of people." Conflicts between a head coach and the HPD are inevitable when the roles are "so poorly thought out", Lynch opined. "I don't think the whole paradigm has been evaluated properly. We're adding complexity where you don't need it.

"Maybe in a sport like athletics where you have so many different disciplines, you need someone to coordinate - but in rowing the whole national team would fit in my front room."

A head coach and a number of assistant coaches should be sufficient to take charge of the Irish team, Lynch believes, deeming the present role of HPD as "poorly defined and a waste of resources". The way forward, he feels, is more professionalisation.

"All high performance sports should be taken from national governing bodies. Let the Sports Council run it," he argues. "Once you become a senior representative for your country the infrastructure and everybody around you should be professional."

The idea the reward for the volunteer is to move up a level and have a say in sport at the very top gets short shrift from the Olympian and former double world champion.

"Sentimentality doesn't have a place in modern sport," he said. "There is room for amateurs in clubs. And club rowing is dying." Away from the big picture, Lynch said he felt the outgoing HPD "has been treated badly".

"Richard came here with the best will in the world, with good ideas and good credentials. He wanted to change things," Lynch said.

An even more ringing endorsement came from one of the key men involved in club rowing, Gerry Farrell of Neptune: "He was the best thing to happen Irish rowing in a number of years," said the former captain of Neptune Rowing Club. Farrell said Parr "was someone with a clear direction" who had worked on expanding the base of the sport here. "He had the courage to go on the irishrowing.com website, and if someone asked a reasonable question he'd answer it," Farell said.

Rather like the Football Association of Ireland, the Irish Amateur Rowing Union has had a remarkable turnover of personnel in recent years.

Ray Sims, Hamish Burrell, Nilsen and Tony O'Connor have come and gone in coaching roles, and Ireland's most successful coach at Athens 2004, John Holland, refused to have anything to do with the head coach's job. Frank Tierney also served a relatively short time as chief executive. Now Parr, the first holder of the HPD post, has gone.

Parr, the son of a nuclear scientist who was born near Henley-on-Thames but grew up in Canada, is sanguine despite the recent developments and continues to plan for the years ahead while his contract is extant.

"It is important to have integrity and to do the job you are hired to do," he says.

He has no immediate plans for the future.

"Everything is wide open at the moment. I'm in a happy frame of mind," he says. Even a recently-broken collarbone has not knocked him off kilter. He jokes: "It's been an interesting couple of weeks. For sure."