permanent contributed

Prestige and appearance always have an ego boosting effect in this event and in a franticeffort by all concerned to paint the blades and decorate them with the college crest it was notuntil the last rampant lion had been painted on that we realised every single one had been stencilledon upside down! However as the race was the following day the lions had to suffer this indignity .The race day dawned as a bitterly cold spring morning, forcing even Cambridge to row insweaters, but our hopes were high for this, our first competition as a team . Our boat started last inthe division, but rowing well we started to gain on our opposition until the pace of this 1 ;-mileevent began to tell and an unfortunate crab lost us this hard-fought ground . Nevertheless it is toour credit that we managed to recover and pull back to an overall 67th position out of the ninetyentries .We started the season with Christopher Eddy as our captain, but the pressure of school workforced him to withdraw, and although the team is still without a captain his loss was partlycompensated by the arrival of another experienced oarsman, Stephen Booty, who joined us assoon as the rugby season ended . We would like to thank Christopher for all the hard work he putinto this task before he left.We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to our coach, Mr . Metters, for persisting inhis mammoth task of shaping an untried crew into a competitive standard, and would like to thankhim for the time he has put towards achieving this end . Thanks are also due to Mr . Conyers andMr. Staveley for their guidance and instruction during the Wednesday afternoon sessions .To end on a prophetic note, only one member of our crew is due to leave at the end of theseason, so in next year's magazine we hope to tell of much better results, perhaps even includingan account of the 31-mile Lincoln to Boston marathon, so, to quote a cliche, " Watch this space!"Wymondham College 1st Eight :Bow-Ian Dickson (Durham) ; 2-Michael Evans (Gloucester) ; 3-Philip Deacon (Durham) ;4-Stephen Booty, 5-Stephen Dobbin (Canterbury); 6- Michael Garton (Norwich) ; 7- MichaelMcDonnell (Canterbury) ; Stroke-Nicholas Elflett (Canterbury) ; and Cox-Geoffrey Lewis(Canterbury) .Stephen Dobbin, Michael McDonnellRUGBY FOOTBALL 1970-71FIRST XVThis season might well be best remembered for the number of pointsthe side scored and in the particular way in which we scored them . Fastopen rugby was always the order of the day, and some of the tries scoredwere truly memorable . At the last check only one other school side hadregistered 600 points . I am the first to admit that some of our opposition isvery weak, but C .N .S . with not a bad side were most upset to go home66-0 down and a 40-0 victory over a hitherto unbeaten Eltham Collegecannot be denied .Quietly but most efficiently, David Payne led his side more by examplethan anything else . Unlike Andrew Green, who could talk his side to victory,Payne relied on his own game to inspire his players ; rarely did it fail . Hishandling, kicking and tackling were all out of the text book and praise for histight head scrummaging has been lavish from the most knowledgeable and severe critics . Fittingreward for this dedicated player came when he was elected to captain the Eastern Countiesschoolboy side ; the first of what should be many rugby honours for Pannus .Once again Malcolm Ireland made an enormous contribution to the College XV's success .A prolific points scorer as well as a destroyer of opposition morale, he provided the flair and