2013 Titles- None
Coach- Robin Dowell
Munich Representatives- Chris Lawrie [Illness forced him out of competition]
Sir William Borlase [SWB] are a squad that I have a lot of time for. The year after winning the major trophy in schoolboy sculling is always one of the toughest and this has been no exception with SWB, with three of their Fawley winning quad leaving along with Tom Fantham who was the other notable sculler in the ranks. However SWB have utilized their available resources and, out of the blur, have created a very competitive boat from the ashes of the 2012 crew.
The crew is made up of Harry Shimmin, who sat at 2 in the 2012 crew. Harry rowed for GB over the summer at the Coupe de la Jeunesse and is a highly experienced. Hugo Coussens is the only J17 in the boat and was in the silver medalist J16 SWB quad from last year. I also believe he is the brother of Max, who was bowman of the Fawley winning 2012 crew. Chris Lawrie and Rufus Biggs are both J16 and also sit in the all-conquering J16 quad that recently broke the J16 quad record at NSR by over 10 seconds. This amalgamation of age groups initially proved fairly innocuous but, since Wallingford where they finished behind Maidenhead and Westminster in the J18 quads final, they have really upped their game, under the careful supervision of Robin Dowell.
I don’t think they have the firepower to win the Fawley this year, particularly not when placed against crews like Marlow. However their excellent performance on Saturday at Marlow Regatta will put the cat among the pigeons so to speak. The fact that they beat both Windsor and Westminster pushes them up the rankings in my opinion and I can see them progressing to the Saturday.
This phoyo was taken from http://www.hrr.co.uk/
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