The 1990s

A Competitive College

The 1990’s proved SEHBC to be a powerhouse of both Men’s and Women’s rowing. Our women’s boats built on the success of the previous decade, with the first boat reaching 4th on the river by 1999. By the millennium the women’s second eight held 39th on the river. The men’s first eight reached 3rd on the river in 1995, and never dropped out of the top 10 crews during the decade.

Crew Memories

Richard Jackson (Matric. 1994)

I remember my time of rowing at St Edmund Hall very fondly, if not only because it welcomed me so heavily in those opening weeks of the first Michaelmas term despite that years’ crew being full of returning university rowers and postgrads.  After a brief dalliance with the University squad that term, which taught me that perhaps my dreams of being the youngest ever Blue were slightly optimistic, I got into the swing of college rowing.  Jonny Clayton (Capt. 1993) coached in-between his relentless OUBC schedule and we were joined early in Torpids term by Grant Gush who had had a disagreement with the OUBC coaches about just how hard you should bang your catch in.  With Grant came his brother “Jonno” and by VIIIs we were on our way to that magical 60st stern IV.   I can’t remember the boat we raced in but I do remember that the entire steering post disappeared under water at every catch as Mr Gush headed towards our cox (James Owens, Capt. 1994).  We had designs on the headship that year, starting 3rd and though we had the crew for it we didn’t seem to have the luck and stayed 3rd.

The next year was my turn to be captain and ever the optimist I thought we could have another crack at going head in VIIIs.  These days I think I’d have seen the real picture earlier in the year but it completely passed me by that we would lose most of the ’93 crew and though we had Marc Bleeze as a returning lightweight that summer, we were somewhat a smaller and more inexperienced crew.  But… we did like an erg session and we seemed to have more luck in finding good water up at Godstow, especially in our pre-Hilary term training camp which saw some fantastic cooking and camaraderie at Martin Thorneycroft’s (Capt. 1996) house (mine being too squalid to ever invite the crew to).  From memory I think we went down 2 to 5th on the river and though that buried the next years’ headship dreams there was an overall feeling of relief that it was only 2 bumps as crews around us had a generous helping of Blues from that year’s race.   If the crew think back to that summer, they would probably remember a good technical boat that lacked the power of past Hall crews but nevertheless could just about cope at the top.

I didn’t row in the ’97 crew as finals took precedence but returned for the 1998 season.  That saw a return to the bigger crews of the early 90’s and, with a new coach Andy Gowans, we were technically good as well but I’ll leave that outcome to others.

RJJ