Cover image by Mark Kelly (thewateredge)
Coming in just a step below senior, the intermediate eights always bring the spectacle, and the women’s race this year at the Irish University Championships is shaping up to be no different. With a number of big names making appearances, the universities will be keeping a close eye on one another’s performances as the multi-lane racing season kicks off with a bang at the National Rowing Centre on 11 April.
University of Galway (UG)
The women from UG are entering a very impressive unit in this category, featuring five members of their Irish Rowing Championships winning eight in this category from July 2024 – Emma Fagan, Maddie Donnelly, Isabel O’Byrne, Ethel Rose Murray, and Jane Hillery. Fagan, Donnelly, O’Byrne and Murray have also recently been invited back to the April round of trials with Rowing Ireland. The remaining members of the crew are talented athletes in their own right – Ellen Forde in the two seat won the club coxed four and eight at the Irish Rowing Championships in 2022, it’s Annick Frohburg’s ninth year in the sport, and Jennifer Hogan took an impressive win in the club eight at Cork Regatta in 2024. It’s a powerful unit, and their triallists’ experiences will surely help them perform well so early in the season.
University College Dublin ‘A’ (UCD)
UCD are entering the same crew in senior as intermediate eight, similarly to UG. It’s chock-full of experience – every member has won at major regattas in the eights by now, from Met Regatta to the Irish National Championships. In bow pair, UCD veteran Alison Daly knows what it takes to drive a boat on, but she’s melded well with the youth of Eimear Muldoon, only in her third season in the sport. An aggressive middle four of Aoife Feeley, Tara Phelan, Dervila O’Brien, and Sarah Butler will relish the challenge of the middle thousand metres – from senior eights championships to Henley Royal Regatta, the trials and tribulations of the big boats on straight-lane courses is far from lost on this group. Finally, in the stern pair, Lauryn Roche and Niamh Campbell lead things out in a similar style to Daly and Muldoon in the bows, balancing experience with relative freshness to the sport. This eight recently won the Colours Boat Race v DULBC. This could indicate a major performance at the first multi-lane regatta of the season.
Dublin University Ladies Boat Club
Rounding out the favourites for the race are DULBC, again entering an identical crew to their senior eight. This will be a crew out for blood after an up-and-down start to the season. At Erne Eights Head of the River, they came first out of six crews, beating UCD by 14.4 seconds and taking home the title of Fastest Women’s Crew. Yet only two short weeks later, UCD put lengths of open water on them during the Colours Boat Race through Dublin. Whether a turnaround in such a short space will be possible for this crew is yet to be seen, but if mentality is everything, they will definitely go out with a point to prove.
Prediction
While UG are always to be feared in the eights, I’d call this category for UCD. Their intense early-season training in preparation for their head-to-head Colours Boat Race against DULBC in mid-March means they typically have the edge at the start of sprint season, with a win in a two-kilometre race being a big advantage to draw on. I wouldn’t look past a tight race, however – between DULBC’s gunning for revenge and UG’s Championship-level triumphs, I think this will certainly be a race to watch.
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