COMPETITIVE ROWING IN GALWAY

by Tom Kenny

Rowing ‘matches’ or ‘badge races’ have been taking place on the Corrib for about 170 years. Initially, when there was only one club, The Corrib Rowing and Yachting Club, competitions were confined to members. Then the Commercial Boat club was formed in 1875, and a meeting was held to promote a regatta at the river beside Menlo Castle. This regatta proved to be a success and was a great boost to the sport of rowing.

It was decided that the regatta should be independent of both clubs and should encourage friendly rivalry and competition. It quickly became an important annual event. Soon, other clubs were formed. St. Patrick’s Club aka The Temperance club was followed by the Royal Galway Yacht Club; Hibernian Rowing Club aka Galway Rowing Club; Galway  Athletic Rowing Club; The Citie of the Tribes Rowing Club and Emmett’s Rowing Club. Later, U.C.G. set up a club as did Coláiste Iognáid and St. Joseph’s College. The rivalry between these two powerful school rowing nurseries meant standards in the sport in Galway would always be high.

Most races were rowed in ordinary regattas, but then in the 1940s, a new concept was introduced where a crew would race against the clock rather than against another crew. There would be a brief time lapse between each boat starting off. They called this new competition the Head of the River.

The first such event in Galway took place in 1948. Rúcán Heaney was deposited on the ‘monument’ upstream from Menlo and he would dip a flag each time a crew passed. Timekeepers on Menlo Pier started their stopwatches on each successive flag dip, one stopwatch being used per crew. Once the last crew started, the timekeepers raced along the narrow roads of Menlo to get to Steamer’s Quay in time to record the crew finishing. It was often a close run thing. This method only worked with a small number of crews. The ‘Head’ was important as it came at the end of the training period for crews and before the regatta season and so they could assess their progress and that of their potential opponents.

Around 1972, Michael Silke from the Motor Club outlined to the ‘Head’ organisers how any number of crews could be timed by the use of just two stopwatches and so began a fruitful working relationship between the Motor Club, the Galway VHF Club and the organising committee.

In 1976, a group of like-minded people got together to work out a way to raise standards and make Galway rowing more competitive. They decided to do this by forming a new club called Tribesmen Rowing Club. They took over the running of the Galway ‘Head’ in 1977 and it became the first ever fully computerised rowing event in the country, thanks to the co-operation of a team from Digital organised by Tom Shaughnessy and Steve Benson. This was an historic day in Irish rowing, instead of waiting many hours, sometimes days for results, crews were being handed them as they pulled in to the slip.

The Galway Head became the premier rowing event in the country for a number of years. The number of participants grew every year so a special race for scullers was introduced, another for small boats. The first Ladies Head of the River took place in 1980.

So we have two photographs today, of the two aforesaid local rivals, all of whom would have raced in the Galway Head. The first is the ‘Jes’ crew taken after winning a trophy at Athlone Regatta in 1952. They are, back row; Brian ‘Gabby’ Quigley, Billy Clerkin, Niall O’Flynn, Danny Griffin, Tom Conboy, Mike McCarra. Seated are Tom Colleran, Larry Hynes and Brendan Sweeney. Our second image is of a ‘Bish’ crew of 1957 with the trophies they won that season. They are; M. Lally (3), Gay Cloherty (4), P. Casey (bow), Eamonn McGuire (5), Marty Faherty (7), Paddy Fox (stroke), Mick McCarthy (2) and Tim Colleran (6). Steve Cunningham (cox) is seated. Our thanks to Paddy Fox for this photograph.

This year’s Galway head of the River, organised by Tribesmen Rowing Club, will take place on Saturday with over a thousand rowers taking part, including international crews from France, Italy, Wales and USA, not to mention the cream of Irish rowing. Each crew will row the 4.2 km from the mouth of Lough Corrib to the Quincentennial Bridge. The first race starts at 11am and features Women’s eights, men’s coxed fours, men’s coxless fours, women’s coxed quads and men’s coxed quads. The second race starts at 3pm and features men’s eights, women’s coxed fours, women’s coxless fours, men’s coxed quads and women’s coxless quads. The best place to watch the race is from the Quincentennial Bridge. You can expect to see lots of trailers carrying fine boats in Galway over the weekend.