Trinity look the top tip to lift the Leander Trophy for senior men's eights in tomorrow's Cork City regatta at Inniscarra Lake, Farran Wood. Trinity will be without James Lindsay-Fynn and Andy Coleman, but in the absence of Neptune's eight, the university crew should overcome the challenge of the five other crews in the straight final.

The other crews involved are Commercial, a UCC/Shandon composite, Cork, St Michael's and a Garda eight whose progress will be worth considering, given their early-season form.

A senior Neptune eight will be in much sunnier climes this weekend. A long-standing invitation to what is effectively a promotional regatta in Porto in Portugal has been accepted. The club will hope for better luck than they encountered in last weekend's regatta in Ghent where, apart from two facile wins for single sculler Albert Maher, very little went right. After a poor performance on the Saturday, Neptune's men's eight qualified for their final on Sunday - but had to miss out because it would have necessitated them missing their flight back to Ireland.

The regatta was, however, something of a triumph for Commercial's senior men's lightweight quad. They came in second to a Belgian heavyweight quad on the Saturday, but pulled out of the double sculls on the Sunday, and beat the Belgians in the final of the quad.

Interestingly, the Commercial quad are financing themselves for a raid on the Munich World Cup regatta at the end of the month. Albert Maher is another likely participant, and another single sculler, British-based Gearoid Towey of Fermoy, has already said he will be travelling. The fact that the World Cup regatta is directly opposite the Metropolitan, or Metro, regatta at Blesssington may set the Irish Amateur Rowing Union a quandary - they have set the Irish regatta as an "assessment" event, but some of the top competitors will be elsewhere.

In the more immediate future, Fermoy stage their regatta this Sunday.