Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics (9 page)

Later that year, I wanted to enter the novice sculls at the Bedford Regatta held then in the week after the Royal Regatta at Henley on Thames. It was one of the biggest non-metropolitan regattas in the country, and with the local club and schools, competition was always fierce. Bobby Swift did not think I was up to the right standard and was not prepared to enter me. I offered to pay my own entry fee, which was seven and sixpence old money, and when it turned out that I would have to race five times to win, he offered to return one and sixpence for each heat should I win any. He thought he was safe, but somehow I had other ideas, perhaps it was my ethnic background, but I raced like hell and won the event. Sitting exhausted just after the finish of the final against a local guy Chris Baron, all I could shout across to the celebrating club members, was “Tell Bobby I want my seven and sixpence back”. I don’t mind blowing my own trumpet but I’d busted the course record in each successive heat.

I bought a second hand single scull later in the year, and because of business commitments concentrated on sculling rather than seeking a slot in a crew. Because of my size, I was never going to reach above club level but I did get chances to slot into crews, and over the years won my spurs in sweep oar, and sculling, up to elite level. Slotting into crews became a bit of a habit, for on two occasions we had injuries to members of our Henley Eight, and I dropped in as the only substitute allowed back then.

But of course at under 11 stone, if I came across a Steve Redgrave type, I got my arse kicked in no uncertain manner. Sadly there wasn’t a lightweight classification back then, but even so I would have had a hard time, for we had a brilliant crop of scullers around that time, and whilst I managed to win at Reading, it was my only success on the Thames.

Our club president Gus Darby, was a wonderful old boy, who looked and lived like someone from the Victorian era. He had a river day boat, The White Lady, that would have graced the Royal Regatta, and stepping into his home in the Park estate in the centre of the City was like stepping back into what at club dinners he always described as that glorious Victorian era. I’d joined the club committee, I suppose representing the younger members, and when it was suggested that the club invested in a gas water heater for the showers, he threw up his hands in horror at such a modern unnecessary extravagance.

In 1957 at the age of 25, I was elected Club Captain, something I could never have dreamed of, but in truth there were senior members of the club with their own agenda, and unbeknown to me, I was chosen as a temporary candidate until they could chose someone of their vintage and standing. Other senior members did not like what they saw happening, and a row broke out between these two senior groups, and I wasn’t sufficiently experienced to find a way of nipping it in the bud before it got out of hand. Sadly it did, and five or six of these top guys resigned, including two top athletes Nick Clay and Peter Acred, who were an outstanding pair, and the former perhaps the most outstanding and upcoming single sculler in the country who was quite capable of going all the way to the top.

The Head of the Thames - I’m at No.3

The guy who effectively drove out these members was a past captain Freddy Brooks, and I admit I did not and could not stand up to him at that time. Happily he was posted abroad to Germany and with his presence removed I set about rebuilding the club. There still remained a good spirit in the club, and we steadily rebuilt our numbers, and rebuilding our reputation in the world of provincial club rowing, putting a decent crew into the Royal Regatta in four of my five years in office. The real breakthrough came when two guys from Leicester who rowed as a pair on the canal that ran through that city, wanted to come to Nottingham for the clear opportunities we could provide. One, Peter Bickley stroked the club eight, and his pair partner Richard Waite, eventually won the Wyfold Cup at the Royal in 1963, going on to represent Great Britain at the world Championships that year, and again on other occasions in a pair with Mike Sweeney who stroked Cambridge three times, and who is now the Chairman of Stewards at the Royal. These two were just the catalyst the club needed, and they helped set the example to the rest of the club as to what could be achieved, even by a comparatively small club. Peter stroked the eight at Reading and when the crew beat the much vaunted Eton Eight, we knew we had arrived.

Richard’s career with us was even more outstanding, being part of that 1960 eight, then stroking the club Wyfold Four at Henley for three years, winning in 1963. He raced for the goblets for three years in 64/66, firstly with our Carl Unwin, and twice with Nick Nicholson, who had paired with Marshall from the Britannia club at the Rome Olympics. I arranged for the local boat builder to build a pair for them, for the princely sum of £215, and named it the Sally Anne after my long suffering, but very understanding wife. We sold it some twenty five years later to Newark Rowing club as a training boat for £200. A boat like that today could cost anything between four and six thousand pounds dependant on the standard of competition it was planned for, illustrating how times and costs have changed. In the late summer of 1962, I was lucky enough to drop into a four stroked by Richard ( Dicky) winning the West of England Cup against our friendly rivals from Derby in the final, and again on the Monday at Ross on Wye.

We set up a combined club arrangement in the region in order to give any outstanding oarsman the chance to race at the highest level, creating on the advice of Graham Ricketts, then Chairman of Stewards, firstly a new registered club under the title of Nottingham City Rowing Club, and subsequently Midland Nautilus. Under that latter title they raced for the top Stewards Trophy at the Royal in 1967, winning it in 1968. I believe they should have won the event in 67, but for the outrageous action of the umpire, John Garton, who allowed the Dutch crew to crowd our four against the booms without issuing any warning, and having as a result lost almost a length, finally lost by half a length. As carefully as I could control my anger at such unfairness, I asked why no action had been taken, to be told by Garton that he decided not to act since he felt the Dutch were the better crew. I replied that I did not think that was the role of the umpire, and so began my years of conflict with him. Our crew should have gone to the Mexico Olympics in 1968, but that is explained later

Richard represented GB in 1966 in Bled in what is now Slovenia, and again in Vichy at the Championships in France. Teaming up with Mike Sweeney, these two, by modern standards comparatively modest sized people were still good enough to represent GB in the Canadian World Championships in 1970. Sally and I drove to Bled for those Championships, staying in Karlsruhe on our first night. It was the first time since the end of the Second World War that I could bring myself to set foot in Germany. As foolish as it may seem, prior to that visit it was just something that emotionally I could not face. I had a lousy night’s sleep, only to discover the following day that we had picked the hotel that had been the Gestapo headquarters during the Nazi era. Crossing into Austria we stayed a night, costing ten shillings old money for bed and breakfast in a small village Anif in the shadow of the Unterberg mountain. On into Yugoslavia, and what is now Slovinia, Bled is a magic place set in beautiful countryside, and again for the same cost as in Anif, we were allocated bed and breakfast at the home of a Frau Branco. What always sticks in my mind is that the agency allocating accommodation was called the “compost”, and that umpires in Serbo-Croatian are known as “sodniks”. I can’t think of a more appropriate title !

One Whitsun weekend in 1960, our senior eight had entered the Regatta at Chester on the Saturday, and Hereford on the following Whit Monday. Our number two man, could not make the Chester race and as coach I dropped in as had been my lot on many occasions over the years. We were delighted to beat Royal Chester in round one, and Portora in the semi-final. Racing Shrewsbury School in the final, we won by half a length in a tough race, for schoolboys just never know when they’re beat! The Captain of their crew came round to offer his congratulations, and sought to shake my hand whilst I was sitting exhausted in the boat. “Congratulations sir, but we’ll reverse that on Monday in Hereford”. I replied “Many thanks, but I’m sorry lad you’ve missed your chance, for I’m only the coach substituting for the real guy who’ll be in the boat on Monday!”

The one occasion we did not enter a crew at the Royal, resulted from our lack of technical skills to properly evaluate the quality of a crew. Our greatest opposition in the late fifties and sixties were our friends in the Burton Leander Rowing Club, and our only measure of our standard was whether we could beat the Burton crew. They narrowly beat our four in the provincial regattas, and the decision was therefore made that we would not let our crew go forward to the Royal. Pity we did not know just how good both crews were, for the Burton Leander crew went on to win the Wyfold Cup at the 1959 Royal Regatta.

With my Double Sculls partner Mike Collier

To illustrate, not just our lack of technical information and skills, but the same applied to the selection of British crews for World and Olympic Championships. Standard qualifying times were set for each event, but the trouble was that we did not have any still water on which to set trials. On the Henley reach, one of the coaches to the GB team was Geoffrey Page, and he used to float a stick – like Winnie the Poo – past the Leander stage, and having timed it, calculated the strength of the stream, and hence was able to correct the standard time required for a crew to qualify. Such rule of thumb would bring gales of derision from modern coaches, but that’s the way it was. Of course all that changed once Holme Pierrepont was built, and GB has never looked back since.

Back in the fifties very few women rowed, and certainly none did so in the provinces. One Sunday morning I was stuck for a cox for one of the crews and we put a thick sweater onto the young sister of one of the crew members. With a woolly hat to round it off, I felt we could get away with it, but when Gus Darby made his customary visit to the club, he pointed with a shaking finger at the crew exclaiming “Mr Captain, there’s a woman in that boat”! I apologised and promised it would not happen again, and it was years before my club finally allowed women to join.

I suppose my active interest in politics began back to 1966/7, for having completed five years as Club Captain, I took on five years as club secretary, and planning and organisation took up more and more of my leisure time away from the business. At that time, the provincial clubs were looked down upon by the metropolitan clubs, and the officers of the governing body, used to come to a meeting in Birmingham of all provincial clubs, and there we were informed of how they intended our sport was to be run. As mere provincials, after all what did we know about the finer arts of rowing ! That frankly got up our noses, and when elected to the City Council in 1968, I had a taste of what could be done, and how to go about it. That year was also the time when a real gentleman Freddy Page, the father of Geoffrey, was the senior officer at the ARA and he led the reorganisation of the association, arranging for elections for all the provincial regions. My colleagues in the Derby, Burton and Newark clubs, put me forward and I was elected to represent the East Midlands Region.

I made my first mistake, in that I believed I was elected to represent the East Midlands on the National Council, and not the National Council in the East Midlands. Sadly some of the establishment still clung to the notion that we were there to listen and not be heard. Thus was my training in the politics to come. That year too, was Olympic year with the games in Mexico City. By then we had put together a joint crew from our club and Derby Rowing club, which was unbeaten in England, winning the Stewards Cup at Henley, and was undoubtedly the best in the country in that class of boat. The selection board had decided that qualification would be based solely on the outcome of the regatta in Amsterdam. The course which has since been reconstructed, had a problem with the wind, which, if it was a following wind, would spin off the grandstand at the finish, and after a few days would have the water on the course slowly circulating making it grossly unfair. The Dutch made clear that they would not use the results for their own selection purposes, but for some obscure reason, one member of our selection panel insisted that any result should stand, regardless of how unfair the results turned out. It was calculated that a sculler in lane six, the most affected lane, would be 17 seconds slower than his equal in lane one ! That member, Colin Porter, who had been one of our successful internationals and supposedly the athlete’s friend, seemed able to overrule the Chairman Christopher Davidge who was the only Gold medallist we’d had in many years, and the rest of the selection panel likewise seemed unable to challenge Colin’s dogmatic view.