One of the joys of being your correspondent is receiving emails from Club members. (Fortunately emails from my peers reminiscing antics of youth are now more readily denied due to old age and poor memory.)

This month I have had the pleasure of correspondence with Paul Schreier who has been resident in England for much of his life since his rowing finished in 1980s. He is an avid reader of Club news and supporter of the Club. He is a deep thinker and so maintains a great perspective on rowing over the years.

He laments the false economy of Australian teams of the 1960s and 1970s where an almost tragic amateurism that must have robbed many crews of success. Year after year, one reads "the crews went to Europe with out of date Australian equipment" .. . Paul continues:

Anyway, the mind boggles, especially because the smaller (and poorer!) NZ was getting its crews right to the top of the sport at the same time, including a great win in the VIII in 1972. They did it again in 1982 at the world championships and one of that crew, Tony Brook, coached me at Cambridge. He was outstanding and a very good bloke too: one of those smaller types who used to get into heavyweight crews in that era through sheer bloody mindedness and determination (a al Antonie). He told me a great story once about that NZ crew build up in training in Lucerne in 1982.

They were boating out of the Rotsee sheds and every time they came in from rowing the (huge) East German crew was standing at either side of the entrance to the shed, arms folded, as the Kiwis put their boat away. It was a crude attempt at an intimidating "guard of honour". Anyway, after a few days of this, the Kiwis had had enough and one of them (the smallest one) let go of the eight as they were slipping it back in to the shed. He walked up to the biggest German he could see, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him back against the door, saying: "You know mate, we've got blokes as big as you back home. You know what we did with them?" German: "No." Kiwi: "We left them there." Game, set, match: Kiwi gold!

Paul recently moved into a beautiful country residence outside Oxford where he and his wife tend a surperb garden. His wife maintains a blog which attaches photos of the garden. The latest blog is at the following address and is worth a look: https://jannaschreier.com/2020/07/31/july-2020-in-the-garden/#more-10907.

Thanks Paul for your continued interest and support of the Club.

Paul as the three man of the Mercs national championship under 19 four in 1987