News & Events
Phil Brown
10th September 2023
Philip Brown, 1946 – 2023
Not everybody who rows at Cygnet seeks copious silverware at high profile regattas; some are quite happy to beaver away quietly in the background, contributing to the greater good. One such member was Philip (‘Phil’) Brown, a club vice president, who passed away quite unexpectedly in his sleep on Monday, 30th August. He was 77.
Phil joined Cygnet in the mid-1970s. He had rowed at his Cambridge college and was keen to continue wielding a blade on a recreational basis. Cygnet amply fulfilled this aspiration. The club boasted a large pool of casual oarsmen in the 1970s and 80s, ably organised by Chris Gates who welcomed Phil as a co-convenor of this sometimes disparate squad. From there, it was but a short step to assisting (and ultimately organising) the London Business Houses Head, a head race for up to thirty likeminded business houses rowing clubs.
Phil was one of life’s boffins. Fresh out of university, he quickly found his niche in the Ministry of Defence. Richard Kemball-Cook, a contemporary rower and MoD employee recalls: “he (Phil) was more front line than me: in the late 1970s I remember him going on about these little toy planes that were to be the future of warfare. How right he was!”
Shaping the future of warfare may have been his day job, but attending to the minutiae of club business consumed much of his leisure hours. He rowed in various gentlemen’s Vllls (see below at bow in a Business Houses Head race), sat on various committees, served as club secretary and bungalow secretary, often appeared at regattas as a supporter (with his faithful caravan in tow) and cajoled family members into producing endless felt pennants for Tideway events. Chris Gates had trained Phil well and they would both become staunch supporters of St Neots regatta, always a firm Cygnet favourite.
A great believer in the ethos of civil service rowing, Phil and his long-term companion Rubina Curtis, president of BBLRC, regularly attended annual conferences of the Civil Service Sports Council. Many a time, unsuspecting CSSC officials were caught off guard by searching questions from the floor as Phil and Rubina grilled them on policy towards rowing, rarely missing an opportunity to remind them of the proud history of the Civil Service Rowing Association.
Earlier this year, he accepted an invitation to attend a regional AGM of the CSSC. As he reported back, it was clearly a disappointing experience: “Most of the attendees could be described as ‘mature’ and few looked ‘athletic’. It was a meeting of friends who made no attempt to welcome me, or even talk to me”. Never one to mince his words, he concluded “if this is typical of CSSC operations around the country, the interest in team sports is minimal”.
Still, lest anybody thought Phil was a blinkered bureaucrat, he was a great steam train enthusiast, regularly volunteering with one of the local heritage lines. Gadgets fascinated Phil and he often arrived at regattas with the latest cameras, not to mention smart cars. An IT whizz, Phil kept everything on his computer and had built up a large digital library of civil service crews, a valuable supplement to both club’s archives.
For many of us, our last encounter with Phil will have been at Old Blades on the Friday of Henley Royal Regatta, when he and Rubina could be seen ‘working the room (or perhaps the garden on this occasion)’. A steadfast companion of Rubina’s, he never failed to enquire about members’ health and wellbeing and always had the club’s best interests at heart.
Phil’s funeral will be held on19th October at 12.30pm at St Peter's Church, Church Lane, Wrestlingworth, Sandy SG19 2EU, a few miles east of his beloved Biggleswade on the B1042.
Paul Rawkins, September 2023
Ken O'Brien
17th August 2023
Kenneth O’Brien
1947 – 2023
It is with great sadness that we record the death of Ken O’Brien on Thursday, 3 August, at the age of 76, after a lengthy hospital confinement.
A loquacious individual, which earned him the nickname Kenny O’Burble, Ken was a member of Cygnet for a relatively short space of time (1981–84), yet no one could deny that he left his mark.
Ken initially joined the club as a social member and swiftly set about running the 300 Club (with Phil Beckett, an unlikely combination) and organising social fixtures from afternoon teas to stag nights at the White Hart. A people person at heart, he had a knack of lubricating the wheels of social intercourse, often keeping us late into the night at the club bar or the Sun Inn, one of our favourite haunts at the time.
Always up for a party, Dave Jillings recalls “Kenny throwing petrol on the bonfire at a CRC/CSLRC Guy Fawkes night with predictable consequences. When he arrived at A&E they said he was the first casualty of many they were expecting that evening”. Singed eyebrows notwithstanding, it was “his irrepressible optimism and bounciness that made him so likeable, and I hope that is the main thing he will be remembered for”.
In 1982 Ken surprised everybody by announcing that he had decided to join the ranks of the active rowing squad. Not the most obvious physical build for the sport, he nevertheless defied the naysayers, thundering around the Chiswick gym on Tuesdays, weightlifting on Wednesdays and jogging round the five-mile run on Thursdays. Few could doubt his sheer determination; stones of weight were shed, and he made his debut competitive appearance in the 1983 Head of the River Race, rowing at bow.
However, his greatest achievement afloat was winning Novice Vllls at Hammersmith Regatta a few weeks later. Coxed by Colin Dominy, the crew was a sight to behold ranging between tall and short, large and small, young and old. Nonetheless, once in motion it proved to be an unstoppable force, cruising to an easy win in its maiden regatta. Further regatta appearances followed, culminating in the Rhine Marathon, all 42kms of it, a true feat of endurance as fellow crew member Charles Pepino recalls, “but we lived to tell the tale and sink one or two Altbiers afterwards”.
Professionally, Ken was an insurance broker, which played to his people skills. However, he was never at one with the paperwork and saw his true calling in life as proprietor of a local wine bar, plying the upwardly mobile of Barnes with vodka cocktails in the then defunct Waterman’s Arms, opposite the boat club. Market research followed with flurries of questionnaires handed out at Barnes Station. Sadly, his bankers were less convinced and it remained a pipe dream but, such was his indomitable spirit, he clung to the scheme for years afterwards. One wonders what he would have had to say about the Waterman’s latest incarnation as a cocktail bar and fancy restaurant.
Ken had given up active rowing by the mid-1980s, but he remained a fixture on the social scene and never more so than at semi-annual gatherings with our companion club Benrath in Germany. The accompanying photograph was taken following the 1983 Rhine Marathon with Ken characteristically centre stage. Benrath found Ken something of an enigma leading one of them to ask “What is the function of Kenny in your club”. The answer must surely be “all of the above”; he was fun to be around and just carried on regardless.
Ken’s funeral will be held at 2.20pm on 11 September at Kingston Crematorium, Bonner Hill Road, Kingston KT1 3EZ. All welcome.
Paul Rawkins, August 2023
Captain’s Valedictory Log: Thank you Cygnet
12th August 2023
Dear Cygnets, this is your (former) Captain speaking!
I hope you will forgive one last Captain’s log as I sign off as your Captain.
This week we met (virtually) for our summer Ordinary General Meeting and with a great deal of pride having led Cygnet as your captain for the last two season, was pleased to pass the baton on to the incoming captaincy team who will take the club forward into the next Heads Season and beyond.
As I reflected on Monday evening, it has been a great privilege to row with you and serve you as Captain for the last two years, having taken the mantle on from Cristobal, and I hope have guided Cygnet forward and upwards through Heads, Regattas and much else beside on the river and off! Whilst it has been a long recovery from the seasons impacted by covid, coupled with the many challenges of being a small(er) upper Tideway club, I am proud of all that we have achieved out in the fairway and for our development as a club around the boathouse and beyond in the wider rowing community.
Most importantly I take enormous pride in our continued strength and achievements as a family of Cygnets, with such a proud history and treasured connections across our generations of rowers and many traditions it has been a privilege to be part of and now in standing down to pass on.
I’m incredibly pleased with the progress we have made as a squad and all of the hard work, training and racing efforts that our rowers have put in continuing to compete and hold our own on the Thames and further afield whilst creating the environment for us all to thrive and enjoy the sport - and social bonds - of rowing with Cygnet.
We’ve taken some great strides forward these past two seasons and from this I’m sure our best is certainly to come. My huge thanks and gratitude to Beth for all her support and expert coaching that has been so integral to so much of our development as individual rowers and as a squad. We wish Beth every success with Putney Town Masters Women.
I’d like to extend my thanks to both my captaincy teams, Martin and Pete for all their work in my first season and to Henrik and Matt Gutteridge for their immense efforts and support to me and the club this year - especially for the outreach and development support both our current rowers, our bonds with the civil service and the future of Cygnet Rowing.
I’m also immensely grateful to our longstanding Chairman and now President, Nick and Charlie having taken the Chairmanship this season, for their guidance, much wisdom and support as I’ve sought to lead Cygnet in its most recent chapter.
Rowing is of course at its best as a team sport so my immense appreciation extends to the Committee and the many selfless volunteers who have stepped forward time and again to lend a hand, to pitch in and help make Cygnet a great and better place to row. We couldn’t row and we couldn’t function as a family without your efforts, oftentimes unseen, to keep us moving forward in the very best of Cygnet spirit. Thank you to each of you.
I wish Martin, my successor as Captain, and Tom C and Mustafa, as his Deputy and Vice, the very best of luck and all my support for the 2023/24 season ahead - Cygnet will continue to thrive under your leadership and encourage one and all to row in behind to support their efforts and to actively involved in helping to make Cygnets next chapter an even greater success.
My heartfelt thanks to all of your cygnet friends and family for your patience, kindness and help along the way - as my predecessors will know, a Captain’s work is never done and challenges there are many but I and we as a Cygnet family have made the best of it and I’m grateful for your enthusiasm and support towards our collective endeavours.
I’m looking forward to the next season and rowing from the backbenches whilst supporting the incoming team and the club with the hard efforts and successes to come in the year ahead.
I hope many of you will be joining our end of season celebrations in September, but until then Cygnets, thank you and row well.
With warmest wishes,
Rupert Bailey
Cygnet Captain 2021/22, 2022/23
