Local crews tipped to do well
Date Published: {J}
THE Head of the River winter season draws to a close this weekend with the Tribesmen Head of the River in Galway. This year the Galway event hosts Rowing Ireland’s new National Eights and National Fours Heads.
The “national heads” is a new initiative by Rowing Ireland, intended to recognise Head of the River “champions” in Eights, Fours and Sculls. This year over 260 crews will compete for the honours, and, although a handful of crews will be missing due to an unavoidable clash with London Head, stiff competition is assured.
The nap of the field for the Senior Eights would be NUIG, whose crew includes Beijing Olympians Cormac Folan and Alan Martin, but they will face stiff competition from the Marc Stephens stroked Galway RC boat, as well as a Galway/Commercial composite and an unknown quantity in the University of Limerick boat.
Likewise, the NUIG senior fours of Martin, Mannion, Folan and Wall have to be considered favourites, with the main threat coming from neighbours Galway. In the absence of Bann, who have shown great early season results, but have elected to not travel, a three-way battle for supremacy in the men’s junior ranks between St Joseph’s, Cork Boat Club and Presentation Coll, Cork seems assured.
In the Women’s senior ranks, Commercial, winners last week in Dublin, will be amongst the front runners, though the local composite of NUIG/Tribesmen will prove a threat in both eights and fours.
Locals are likely to hold sway in the non “national”-rated sculling events where NUIG’s Liam Molloy will be the one to watch in the men’s, while a fascinating duel is likely to take place between Tribesmen’s open-weight Lisa Dilleen and lightweight Siobhan McCrohan.
A notable feature of the entry is that sculling is increasing in popularity, especially amongst Novices and the 15/16-year-olds, with 170 of the total entry of 263 boats being of the sculling variety.
In a rare outing, Carlowman and Olympian Sean Drea is expected to take to the water on Saturday in his single scull. It is anticipated that he will cross the finishing line at about 4pm an Saturday. Sean is a three-time winner of the Diamond sculls at Henley ’73-’75, a feat unequalled since; World Championship silver medallist (1975) and fourth in the Olympics (1976).