Xmas Day Paddle

There will be an Xmas Day Paddle at RRC at 8am on Xmas Day. If you are up and about pop down and have a row. SMS Mike Numa 0410521140 to advise if you are coming.

Coxing Workshop – This Sunday – 15 December 10:00am-11:30am

This Sunday we will be holding a coxing masterclass from 10:00am – 11:30am, to be conducted by the club’s experienced and very successful cox Bec Lionnet.
The masterclass is specifically aimed at those with little or no coxing experience (no matter how much rowing experience!) and will cover the following areas:
General call in the boat and what they mean
Basic RV rules and general rules on the river
On water practical experience
If you’re interested in participating in the workshop please email me at [email protected] straight away to secure your place!
We will also need rowers to make up crews for the practical part of the course (though there can be some seat swapping) and would like to have an experienced rower will be in stroke seat of each boat. Volunteers please also let me know – you may yet be volunteered…
This will be a great opportunity to start building up our coxing skills across the club. For any rower who has coxed, you’ll know that it actually helps your rowing as well.
All club members would want to see this workshop strongly supported, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Derek Begg
Head of Rowing
13-14 Season

Redevelopment now out to Tender

Exciting news – the tender for the boathouse redevelopment was issued on Friday 15 November and closes on 12 December. All going well, we will select a builder and sign contracts before Christmas.
This means building works will start early in the New Year. There will be no interruption to the rowing program until April at the earliest. We will have more details on any interruptions when we have finalised the building works plan with the builder early in the New Year.
Signing the building contract is contingent on DEPI and City of Melbourne signing our sub-lease with MLC and providing Ministerial Approval for the redevelopment. Both have been sought and the departments are aware that we are at tender and they need to provide this before contracts can be signed. We are hopeful  that we will be successful in getting this sign-off in time.
A really big thank you to Franziska Locher and Liz Shiel who have put in so many, many hours behind the scenes to get everything ready for the tender. To Stephen Colley from MLC for also putting in much work to ensure we could get to tender and to the architects at FMSA.
Lucy Crunden

The DEM'N Quad

Denis, Emma, Martin & Nicole
Denis, Emma, Martin & Nicole introduce the new mens quad

 
A big congratulations to everyone involved in another great day at the club on Sunday 10th November. It gave me great pleasure to officially name the two newest boats added to our fleet. We welcomed Dennis Beck, Emma Catford, Martin Foster and Nicole Stupka to officially name the new mid weight coxed four and quad which we purchased earlier on this year from Latrobe University Boatclub. This boat gives us great flexibility in the fleet enabling us to take one boat on the trailer for both sweep and sculling races at regattas and fills the gap left by the retiring of the James Butcher. The boat was named Dennis, Emma, Martin & Nicole, or to be known in the shed as “THE DEM’N” after the very successful masters mixed quad crew that represented Richmond both state and nationally. Along with their successes on the water each one of them served for many years on the club’s committee and were instrumental in the running of the club from 2008 until the present day. A well deserved honour for them all.
We also officially named the new double/pair, another flexible addition to the fleet. The sesquicentennial (150 years) was a very generous anonymous donation to the club given to us to mark the milestone of 150 years of continuous operation and we are very grateful to the mystery supporter of the club who bestowed this great surprise on us at the Gala Dinner in September.
There was action on the water too as Justin Thomas and helpers again organised a very successful club time trial event that gave everyone a chance to warm up their legs for the upcoming head racing season on the Yarra. Line honours on the day went to the men’s quad of Michael Gehling, Charlie Burke, Michael Calvert and David Micallef coxed by Michelle Joy.
Just to let you all know the next event at the club will be on Saturday 23rd November when multiple Richmond crews will be taking to the Yarra to compete in the Melbourne Head course. The bar at the clubhouse will be open for the afternoon following the conclusion of racing so friends and family are welcome to come along and support RRC.
The fun keeps coming too as Christmas is just around the corner so look out for information soon about this years RRC Christmas ‘Hoe-down’ to be held on Thursday 19th December.
See you all soon.
Karen Doggett
RRC President

RRC Crew Selection Policy

The head racing season reaches a pinnacle at the end of this month, with The Melbourne Head on Saturday 23 November, and Head of the Yarra on Saturday 30 November.
The sprint season will then be upon us!
So it’s perhaps timely that members keep in mind the way regatta crews are selected. Here is the policy:
RRC Crew Selection Policy
Primarily, selection is done by squad coaches. For practical reasons, the lines between squads and who is whose coach can sometimes be hard to define. So there is always a point where the club just has to work at the practical level and ad hoc.
That said, the club’s essential selection criteria are:

  • Commitment to the training set by the coach and to the specified event (i.e. to being there, and to giving what the event will ask of the rower)
  • Attendance at training and doing the ergos/land training required by the coach (even if self-reported)
  • Eligibility for the event (e.g. ROMS score, weight, age)
  • Fitness, skill and ability to compete in the event
  • Crew ‘fit’ as assessed by the coach

and then the crew is still subject to:

  • the availability of boats/oars/coxes/coach(es) for training and the event
  • the event presets of the regatta

In the perfect world, coaches then communicate with the Head of Rowing to propose their crews and the Captain and HOR work on the last two points.
Occasionally rowers want to plan together to form crews. This needs to be done on a coordinated basis and with HOR approval, as it needs to take account of the club’s need to allocate resources for all rowers’ goals across the club.
If rowers have some goals around major regattas, they should approach their coach with a proposal that takes into account the selection criteria set out above.

New Weekly Sculling Sessions

Hi RRC members,
I will be running a weekly sculling session for RRC members on Saturday mornings at 1030 am and all are welcome to attend.
The sessions will be technique focussed and probably no more than 1.5 laps. Each week we will focus on one specific part of the stroke cycle with drills and feedback. Later I hope to incorporate some video as well.
To make the most of these session, you are encouraged to participate in small boats to really develop the ‘feel’ of sculling – but all and any are still welcome.
If you are interested to come then please do let me know by email by this coming Wednesday 13 November, so that we can allocate boats in time for our first session.
Cheers,
Geraldine
[email protected]