chopperharris wrote:

Most of these guys were listed as racing in their Oxford college boats for summer eights at the end of May. To suggest they are bona fide members of Team Keane two months before close of entries is just a load of bollocks. Being a member of a club should entail more than simply producing a dubious backdated piece of paper. The rules need tightening up to stop this blatant cheating, which its what it is.

Spot on. Whole thing's a vanity project for Paul Keane, just like his dodgy 'club'.
 

It is cheating because most of the crew were rowing in their college crews up to summer eights and cannot have been, in any meaningful way, genuine members of Team Keane Sculling School. I appreciate they could all probably produce pieces of paper to say that they were all members before the cut off date but the fact is that they were all rowing and studying in Oxford right up to the end of May. Pretending they were members of Team Keane is cheating. Providing a long list of other crews that have also cheated does not justify ongoing cheating - it just shows that the rules need to be tightened and enforced much better than they have been over recent years. I think the Stewards are grasping that nettle now.

Loserharris wrote:

It's not cheating as no rules have been broken and as you say they are all members of that club. You just make up some bullshit distinction between 'genuine' club members and registered club members

There is the letter of the rules, and the spirit of the rules. Henley Stewards have a good history of not letting Rules Lawyers get away with leveraging the letter of the rules to get an advantage and it is heartening them to see them do the same to blatantly bad-spirited entries.

It's no different to when they DQ'd the first ever coxless four.

Last edited by chainyanker (6/20/2017 7:33 pm)

It's always the biggest choppers who moan the most about these things

TidewayBulletin wrote:

It's always the biggest choppers who moan the most about these things

No surprises there, every club has the shit rower = jobsworth types