Sir Cam (p

game. Lockdowns in Michaelmas and Lent Terms and exams during Easter Term meant that these were unfortunately the last matches we were able to play during the 2020-21 season. To fill this void, we were delighted that many SCMLC players requested to borrow sticks and balls to train with their households. Georgina Taylor and I also offered one-on-one training sessions throughout Lent Term to help develop the skills of the squad and ourselves. Despite the few games we managed to play this season, we are incredibly proud of the attitude and commitment of the squad. The engagement of freshers this year was particularly exciting and provides much hope for the future of SCMLC. We look forward to seeing how the team do in the future and we cannot wait to return for the Old Boys and Girls match next term.

Co-captains: Theodore Brook, Georgina Taylor

Theodore Brook

NETBALL (LADIES)

The ladies netball team wearing their new kit, provided by the JCR

We played five or six matches in the Easter Term – we were unable to play during the rest of the year through a combination of government restrictions and because teams were in isolation. We won quite a few of the games and I am looking forward to playing next year under the leadership of Laura Mayo. Special mention should go to Marisse Cato who was awarded ‘woman of the match’ at least three times! It has been a short but sweet season, but everyone came together to play some great games.

2021-22 captain: Laura Mayo

Poppy Robinson NETBALL (MIXED)

Despite the obvious disruption due to Covid, particularly the strange new restrictions put in place – sanitising balls between quarters, no toss-ups, and marking from four feet away rather than three, among other changes – the mixed netball team has actually made marked steps forward this year, with a number of new recruits from the incoming year group, such as Isaac Milford, Georgia Mifsud and Marisse Cato, the last of whom has already been nominated as ‘player of the match’ on a number of occasions due to her excellent play. Beyond this, we have also seen a handful of older students getting involved, including students borrowed from Selwyn’s other sports teams, such as Reuben Brown and Jake Berry. Although both Michaelmas and Easter Term leagues involved only friendly matches, in case of other college teams having to isolate, the Selwyn team has consistently and enthusiastically shown up every weekend for matches. There was also an impressive turn out at the intermittent training sessions, which provided a great opportunity not just for improving skills but also for team building. With some great wins under our belt, we are all very much looking forward to coming back and playing again (and hopefully more frequently) next year.

Ceci Browning

For obvious reasons, the activities of clubs and societies have been much curtailed this year and so there are fewer reports than usual. The editors are, therefore, pleased to be able to publish some delightful Boat Club reminiscences kindly submitted by Leonard Clark (SE 1951).

HOW NOT TO ACHIEVE A WORLD ROWING RECORD ON THE CAM

Before coming up to Cambridge after National Service, I had consumed Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, but its highly comical narrative was outdone by eight men in a Selwyn boat on the Cam a couple of years later. As a novice oarsman, I worked my way up from the bow of Selwyn’s fifth eight to stroke our third boat by the time of the May 1953 Bumps. We had inherited a prime position near the top of our division and only needed to make two bumps to head it. On day one we raced off and narrowly missed our first bump, as the boat ahead of us just made contact with the eight it was pursuing. We had outdistanced our own following boat, which was itself bumped. Not only that, but the eight that started three places behind us had also been bumped out of the race. So we had clear water ahead and nothing to aim at, and the nearest boat to our rear had started five places behind us and was not even in sight.

It is possible to be ‘bumped’ by an eight starting one place back and to be ‘over-bumped’ by one three places behind. But – our coach on the river bank assured us – no eight had ever been ‘double over-bumped’ in the history of the

races by a pursuer starting five places behind. And so our race was over and we were ordered to paddle gently to the finishing line and save our energies for the next day’s race; which is what we proceeded to do, with our coach and cox both soothing us to enjoy a leisurely row-over. From his bicycle, our coach lulled us into an even falser sense of security with the news that the nearest pursuer was a King’s College eight – never a serious competitor to Selwyn!

However, as we entered Long Reach, a pursuer hove into the view of the stroke, but was completely ignored by our cox, even though their bow wave looked more like that of ViKings! My squeals of panic seemed to take ages to alert both coach and cox, our oarsmen belatedly ‘gave it ten’ and began to race once more. But, try as we might, the King’s eight overhauled us and just managed to make contact with our rudder as we both crossed the finishing line. They were adjudged to have ‘double over-bumped’ us – something unheard of then, and ever since, in the annals of the May Bumps. O calamity!

And so I am one of eight Selwyn boatmen who jointly achieved an inglorious world rowing record. The achievement of those Kingsmen, who sneaked up on us that sunny afternoon, is still commemorated today in the King’s College boathouse more than sixty years on. More immediately, given the propensity that we fallible human beings have of blaming others for our own shortcomings, I took away the abiding image of our cox just sitting there while I was labouring like a galley slave – and I resolved to become a cox next term. I mean, how difficult can it be...?

HOW NOT TO COX A ROWING EIGHT

I once met Antony Armstrong Jones and very nearly drowned him. He was coxing the Cambridge second Blue Boat (Goldie) which was ‘rowing a course’, i.e. a timed trial during which every other boat on the Cam is obliged to give way. Unfortunately, I was on my very first outing as a cox, with a crew of first timers. Worse still, Selwyn had assigned us The Bursar, an unwieldy clinker-built eight with staggered seats which responded sluggishly to its rudder lines and refused to get out of the way of Armstrong Jones’ racing shell.

Though I ordered my crew to pull aside more or less together, we continued to wallow in the path of the Cambridge University Boat Club eight. Unlike my crew, who had their backs to it, I could see the Blue Boat approaching at speed, with a warning marker on its bows indicating ‘clear the water ahead’. However, nothing we did stopped The Bursar from heading across the river on a course that would intercept Goldie. Its cox spotted the danger, jammed on all the brakes, and slowed to a halt, but a collision occurred and in slow motion my heavy bows slid across the lightweight stern of the Blue Boat and the lap of its cox, and he began to sink beneath the surface of the river. Desperately, I rallied my novice crew to back away before Armstrong Jones was completely submerged, and we raised a weak cheer as we broke free and the Blue Boat’s stern bobbed back up to the surface.

The Goldie crew were either surprisingly forgiving or, more likely, completely stunned. We heard no curses, there were no rude gestures. There was, though, some unconcealed head shaking as we ineptly paddled off downriver, more or less together and more or less in a straight line. Later, the CUBC levied the customary fine and Selwyn condemned The Bursar as unmanageable and retired it. I like to comfort myself with the thought that our meeting on the Cam helped to hone Antony Armstrong Jones’ river skills, because the very next year he went on to cox Cambridge in the boat race on the Thames, with HRH Princess Margaret cheering him on. The rest, as they say, is history. But, as Wellington said of Waterloo (and might have said about our encounter), ‘it was a damned near-run thing’.

A boat crew from the early 1950s. The College Archivist thinks that this may be the crew of the third May Boat in 1952, with Reginald Hollis standing second from the left in the back row, but would be delighted to hear from any reader who can provide more information (archivist@sel.cam.ac.uk).