Building on the work Ryan started the previous season, the Men’s Squad put together a competitive 4+, 4- and 8+ with their first race at Wallingford Head, resulting in a win for the men’s 8+ and a strong performance for the 4+. The next event for the Men’s Squad was the Fuller Fours Head with one 4+ entered. The crew pulled out a strong row resulting in a 9th place ranking in their category.
After the 4s Head, attention turned to the Head of the River Race. After a strong performance the year before, the crew had a start position of 101 and finished 104, an improvement of 13 places on 2018. Unfortunately, after the 8s Head Race, the crew lost a couple of members through relocation and to the Master’s Squad.
As Regatta season rolled around, the Men’s Squad found a few challenges in putting together a crew capable of putting together a serious challenge for Henley Royal Regatta. This ultimately resulted in two boats; a cox-less four of Chris, Matt, Phil and Russell and a Quad of Pete, James, Huseyin and Rick.
Both crews attempted to step up their game and opted to attend the more competitive regattas: Wallingford, Marlow and Met. The quad had a good run out with a relatively inexperienced crew witch ultimately resulted in disappointment but results to work on in the coming season.
The more experienced cox-less 4 put in some strong performance at the afore-mentioned regattas with clear improvements seen race after race with a particularly strong row at Met resulting in a 4th place against a strong field. The final event for the season for the Men’s Squad was Henley qualifiers. Although the crew managed to put together a strong row beating several crews who had previously bettered Broxbourne earlier in the season the results were ultimately disappointing with the crew failing to qualify.
Overall, the year was fairly successful for the Men’s Squad and giving us a solid foundation to build upon in the following season. Thanks has to go out to Phil Robinson, Ben Hughes and the countless others to have up their time to make the season as successfully as possible without a Men’s Captain in place.
Russell Theobald