On Saturday 12th July 2008 Dublin University Boat Club’s senior eight won the Senior National Championship and were crowned outright rowing champions of Ireland for the first time since 1981. The circumstances leading up to the race could have hardly been more dramatic. In fact, they were unprecedented.
In March, DUBC’s eight lost the annual Gannon Cup race, from O’Connell Street Bridge to the Guinness Brewery, to UCD.
On Saturday 12th July 2008 Dublin University Boat Club’s senior eight won the Senior National Championship and were crowned outright rowing champions of Ireland for the first time since 1981. The circumstances leading up to the race could have hardly been more dramatic. In fact, they were unprecedented.
In March, DUBC’s eight lost the annual Gannon Cup race, from O’Connell Street Bridge to the Guinness Brewery, to UCD. While this defeat did not call the talent of Trinity’s finest oarsmen into question, some asked whether this was a crew that could perform under pressure. A subsequent loss to Commercial Rowing Club at Trinity Regatta led coach Mark Pattison and his oarsmen to reassess the crew’s potential, and reinforce the necessity to work exceptionally hard together to ensure a faster boat for the final weeks of the season. The hard work had only just begun.
Training went well and it was with high hopes that our oarsmen travelled across the Irish Sea to compete at Henley Royal Regatta. Unfortunately, as they had no significant overseas wins from this season to declare, our eight was unseeded and drew Harvard University in the first round of the Temple Challenge Cup. Henley’s ruthless knock-out format was enough to ensure that both crews approached the race with an attitude of “do or die”, and the race was one of the fastest recorded in the preliminary rounds of the famous international regatta this year. One radio commentator noted it to be a shame that the two crews should have had face each other so early in the competition. Trinity lost by two lengths.
For some members of DUBC’s senior eight, the National Championship final was to be the last time they would don the black and white zephyr of Trinity. For all of them, it would be a last chance to gain any reward for ten months intensive training. So, while a first round loss at Henley traditionally results in broken oarsmen littering the many bars along the Thames, our rowers immediately returned home to prepare for the final race of the season.
It is worth recalling why DUBC had not won this competition in over 25 years. For a start, while it is hard to state exactly how long it takes for a rower to mature, most will have to row for five or six years at minimum before they are competitive at a senior standard in Ireland. In a club where the average turnaround of an oarsman is four years, it is a serious challenge to produce a crew of nine men capable of winning the Senior Championship.
Public clubs can rely on junior members rising through the ranks, whilst UCD are no longer a student-only outfit, with a membership that spreads far outside the walls of Belfield. The nail in the Trinity coffin in recent years has been the appearance of “composite” crews, composed of oarsmen from a number of different clubs, and even oarsmen from clubs outside Ireland. This year, one such crew contained men racing under four separate sets of colours.
But when the hour finally came and Ireland’s strongest oarsmen lined up to sprint two thousand meters on Inniscarra reservoir outside Cork, it was the Trinity men who made history. As the first DUBC crew ever to go from a first round defeat in Henley to winning the Senior Championship of Ireland, they displayed the most immense fortitude, self-belief and determination.
This millennium is still young, but it is unlikely that Trinity will ever see another crew achieve a similar feat. In crossing the line first those nine men elevated, to heights formerly undreamt of, what it means to wear black and white.
