Well thank God for genuine female eights racing at ISRA today! It really sticks in my craw that coaches from the IGSSA girls' schools persistently and repeatedly divide their senior crews into fours so that the 1st eight race, supposed to be the blue riband event of any regatta, is a joke usually featuring two or sometimes three crews. Often there is no 2nd Eight race at all, such a letdown for the crews who want some competition.
Today was a different story. What a treat to see a full race - a boat in every lane of the Schoolgirl First Eight. It was a genuine championship event.
It defies belief that there is not some simple rule to stop the girls' schools cheating by avoiding eights racing all season, then miraculously finding a First Eight within their ranks in time for HOTR. Queenwood have been guilty of it on more than one occasion. If you have eight senior rowers then you should be required to enter them as an eight in a minimum number of regattas through the season. Can you imagine a GPS school putting their top 16 scullers into fours the whole season while secretly training as eights, and then voila! we'd like to enter them as a First Eight at Head of the River!
The only two schools who enter eights without fail are the two Loretos. Sometimes they are joined by Pymble.
Heads of Rowing at these repeat-offender IGSSA schools need to be called to justify this position to all the BROs, other volunteers, spectators and other schools who attend regattas all season long. Withholding crews in senior divisions is contrary to the spirit of competition, in both IGSSA and Rowing NSW. Many of us are sick to death of it and watching the opposite, a full field in filthy conditions today, just underlines the problem.