Trinity claims head of the river at Champion’s Lake

[Burgs]

Pretty sure Toorak Tractors would be parked outside of various Melbourne football grounds actually, but it sounds good

That's 25 seconds faster than our time in 1990 and 20 seconds faster than the record in 1990 which had been set in 1984
Ours was the last wooden boat to win to my knowledge, by '92 all crews where in the flash shells.

[Flamethrower]

How can they still call it the "Head Of The River" when they race on a lake??

The "Head Of The River" died when it was moved to Canning.

[Burgs]

There's a little trickle that overflows into a creek that joins the Canning which flows into the Swan where the "real" HOTR used to be, but that makes the name look a bit long...

[jargan83]

why was it moved from the Swan to the Canning originally?
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[Cowboy]

Better racing conditions (flatter water) and a permanent marked course.

[Burgs]

The rest of the season was at the Canning Jargs, just the Hale Regatta (lead up as a practice run) and HotR remained.
Now those two have moved on to the Lake, but the rest is still at the more central Canning course.
If you find yourself up (still up...) at that time of a first term Saturday morning sometime it would be worth a look once.
In hind site it is pretty amazing the whole scene of 13-17 year olds being given responsability not to wreck some pretty expensive gear.
However, that said, when I was at school at least they said it cost the school more to run the cricket program than it did to run the rowing program due to the ovals maintenance, tractors, curators etc.

[Fairclough]

Hi , was googling my crew on google to see if any videos were uploaded onto youtube of our race. I am from the First VIII tc crew which won, 3 seat. Was readong some replies and thought I'd make a comment on some.

"silver spoon brigade".
this comment was made by someone earlier. Private school boys arent fed the silver spoon. Many of these schools are run by CBC system, my school runs by the Edmund Rice Tradition, which is a school for the poor. Now obviously the school fee's are too high to be paid for a poor person, but there are people attending my school today who dont even pay school fee's because they were taken off the street and cared for. So it is never a silver spoon effort.

I am so grateful to win head of the river, been wishing for the moment since yr 8, hard work has paid off. scotch were second in line, was a hard race.

I play rugby aswell, being a rugby forum didnt want to be outter place but I prefer rowing.











photos were taken by my dad who is the sports photographer for the west.
thought id share some photos with you as Ive been searching the net heaps for information on this saturdays HOTR.

enjoy! and good to hear from old boys on their thoughts of HOTR

* OH and edit, someone said that a scotch boy had a 6:10 ergo. That was in 2007 by the name of a kid called eric bannon or whatever. that PSA ergo record has been broken by an australian rower in my crew (in the tc 1st viii) called dave watts. the PSA time is now 6:08 . for you who dont know what that is, thats on an ergo machine, and those who row would know how nuts that is.... mines only 6:31 haha

[fulvio sammut]

Welcome Fairclough, and thanks for the effort you have put into your first post here.

Do the street urchins cared for by your school per misericodia get to wear a special badge to identify them from proper students, or can you just naturally tell who they are by the cutlery they use?

[Fairclough]

No not at all. There usually the ones such as the rower ( myself included ) who take every oppurtunity and use it. They're equal as everyone. I am not here to boast bout my schools program for the poor but to rather to defy a point that all private school boys are spoon fed.
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[Cowboy]

* OH and edit, someone said that a scotch boy had a 6:10 ergo. That was in 2007 by the name of a kid called eric bannon or whatever. that PSA ergo record has been broken by an australian rower in my crew (in the tc 1st viii) called dave watts. the PSA time is now 6:08 . for you who dont know what that is, thats on an ergo machine, and those who row would know how nuts that is.... mines only 6:31 haha

6:08 is very impressive. I am going to continue to show my age here and say that I participated in the first state selection ergo that dropped the distance from 2500m to 2000m. I think that the best times on that day were from Rob Scott and Ron Snook and they were around the 6:05 to 6:06 mark. I would be expecting the internationals to be breaking 6 mins by now though.

[Burgs]

Welcome aboard Fairclough and congratulations mate, top effort
I can assure you that in twenty years time you will still get a little shiver when you think back to Saturday or you even watch a race on TV of the Olympics or the like.

I think ergo's were in their third year at Scotch when I was at it.
We had one machine, did one during Rowing Camp and one mid season.
Can't remember times but the Stroke beat me in my Yr11 effort and I topped the crew in Yr12. Crazy stuff, always thought of ergo's as like running two consecutive 400m track races...
I hear these days schools do them every week as a bank of eight machines, sheesh

Anyway mate, great photo's, I hope you have a recording of it?
We were able to get the official recording from ABC TV through a school contact for ours, worth looking into if you haven't already.

Hope you stick around for the Rugby

[Flamethrower]

why was it moved from the Swan to the Canning originally?
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Cause kids were getting soft and were getting scared trying to race in a 2 foot chop.

It was actually quite dangerous some days, boats swamped and sinking. I saw 1 guy tossed out of his boat when the oar dug in at full speed.

[eleypinkbit]

Wonder if the girls Head of the River will be at Champion Lakes too - their race gets even less media coverage than the boys do and the girls work just as hard! Especially as they row in winter - try paddling in the Swan River at 5am when it's zero degrees!

[Cowboy]

Wonder if the girls Head of the River will be at Champion Lakes too - their race gets even less media coverage than the boys do and the girls work just as hard! Especially as they row in winter - try paddling in the Swan River at 5am when it's zero degrees!

Falling into the river when it's zero degrees is even better.

[jargan83]

why do the girls row at a different time of year?

That would be a great weekend for the spoon crew having it all on one weekend
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