ERC The Fellowship – The Inside Story
Every worthwhile endeavour has, at its core, a spark of anarchy. Welcome to the world of The Fellowship.
Our story starts in the spring of 2005. Brian O’Dea had taken a bunch of Ergos up to the Community College as bait to lure exercise-minded youth from the muddy depths of adolescence. One of the would-be rowers who surfaced for a precautionary look was a 16 year-old called Chris Long. He liked what he saw and had a chat with one of his best mates. At that time, Sam Malloy was overweight, pony-tailed, rebellious, and much given to staying in bed. When Chris suggested giving Exmouth owing Club a try, he was horrified.
Why? Because he hated getting wet.
Chris prevailed. Together with three others – Tom Youd, Nathan Cox and Neil Burgess – they ambled down to the club and quickly made the furthest, darkest, dankest corner of the Sweat Box (aka Clubhouse) their own. They brought in a TV (which didn’t work), a games console (which was also knackered), a table and a couple of chairs. Grunge from a stereo box kept the rest of the club at bay and a pair of weights passed from hand to hand in an eternity of Alpha Male Tests.
Looking back, they gleefully admit to being “very bad” but in the Sweat Box something else was going on. They were riding the Ergos. And they were liking what exercise was doing to their bodies. Entered for their first race, pressed for a name to badge their efforts, they came up with The Fellowship of Wasted Youth. Enough said.
But then something remarkable happened. In this first competitive race, they found themselves pitted against the ERC men’s quad crew at the Exeter Regatta. They eyed the combined might of Les Norcliffe, Mark Lees, Nigel Kinder and Toby O’Dea on the start line and went for it. They didn’t win but they came second and the really satisfying bit was the fact that the ERC men’s crew were a distant third. That gap told them a great deal. Back to the Ergos.
By now, coach Brian O’Dea scented the makings of something pretty special. “They were animals”, he says now. “They had the hunger, they were getting fitter by the day, they wanted to make mischief, they wanted to win.”
And win they did. In fact, as the 2006 summer season developed, they couldn’t stop winning. They blew the opposition away at regatta after regatta. From Totnes, Torbay, Paignton, and Appledore they returned with an armful of pots. At Guernsey that year, rowing in the first-ever World Offshore Championships, they scored podium honours with a bronze. That made them the third fastest crew in the country. At the individual level, the news was even better. That year Tom Youd won the J16 West of England Sculling Championship, while Sam Malloy – less of a fatty now – won Novice Champ in the Single Sculls. The Fellowship was on a roll.
Brian O’Dea had seen some of this stuff coming but even he was astonished by the sheer depth of their achievement. “They were great days,” he says now. “We were bringing home more pots than people – but what really mattered was the difference it was making in personal terms. These weren’t kids any more. They were changing in front of my eyes. That’s about life skills, about working together, about learning what’s important. And that’s what rowing at this level can achieve.”
Success brought visibility. The Fellowship had appeared on the national radar and an approach from Exeter Rowing Club took Tom Youd up the river. With the start of the ‘07 season looming, a replacement had to be found. By now, Jack Pearce had become a regular member. He wanted Charlie Angel in the boat. Sam’s preference was Rob Williams. Rob, in his thirties, was much older but the Fellowship was regularly rowing in Senior C, where age is no disqualification. Rob was bashing out decent times on the Ergo, while Charlie was making a big impact in J18 boats. In the end, though, the replacement decision made itself. Rob was available for the Plymouth Regatta and so he jumped in. His fine boat experience was zilch but the newly reconstituted Fellowship powered to yet another win.
More trophies followed, with the hunger for line honours seeping into other crews. One of them was the Mixed Senior C crew – Ali Giles, Jane Edwards, Sam Malloy, and Chris Long. They cleaned up in regatta after regatta until – in Brian O’Dea’s phrase – “the opposition stopped coming out against us”.
Victories like these are always sweet but for The Fellowship the best was yet to come. Their success in the West of England Championships took Chris Long, Sam Malloy, Jack Pearce and Rob Williams to the South of England Championships at Dorney Lake, near Windsor. Dorney Lake is big time, a purpose-built 2K course that will host the 2012 Olympics. Sam remembers standing by the clubhouse, gazing down the course, realizing just how long 2K can look. Coxing was Jack’s brother Ed. Just in case this was to be his one and only visit, he left his mark on the lake by having a wee in it. Fellowship stuff.
The crews gathered on the start line. The borrowed boat meant a hasty re-configuration of the crew and so Jack Pearce, instead of Sam Molloy, was stroke. The start was, in Jack’s phrase, “messy”. At the 500 metre mark the Fellowship was lying fifth. Ed screamed for more effort. By halfway down the course, they’d clawed back to fourth. Ahead lay the reviled Exeter crew. The gap began to narrow. More effort. More sweat. As the Exeter crew weakened, Sam realised they could nail second-placed Christchurch. That battle occupied the rest of the race, with the Fellowship missing a silver medal by a canvas. A disappointment, sure, but nothing compared to the sweetness of beating Exeter. “There were tears that day” recalls Brian O’Dea. “I just couldn’t stop crying.”
That same season came the icing on the Fellowship cake. At the 2007 Offshore World Championships, held in the south of France, Sam, Chris, Rob and Jack, with Ed Pearce in the cox’s seat, qualified for the all-important A” final, finishing 23rd from a field of 57 championship contenders. To get some idea of the magnitude of this achievement, just take a peek at the performance of the Westminster School “A” and “B” crews. Trained by an ex-Olympic coach, they didn’t even make the “A” final.
At the end of the year, with the Dorney Lake memories still fresh, came another milestone. At the ERC Christmas bash, Brian O’Dea awarded his Club Person of the Year trophy not to a single individual but to Chris, Sam, Jack and Rob. The Fellowship had come of age.
The new season, 2008, brought another crew change. Sam and Chris, swopping school for college, were determined to stick in the boat but Rob Williams decided to call it a day and so his seat went to Charlie Angel. He and Jack had been chasing their times down the Ergo all winter, and Charlie was already a class performer in singles and doubles, but full enrolment in the Fellowship was lift-off. “I just loved it,” he says. “Getting into a boat that worked so well takes you places you’ve never been before. We had nine wins in nine races and stuff like that does good things for your head.” Searching for a single word that might sum up this sense of baptism, Charlie grins. The word is “honoured”.
Charlie took this sense of – yes – fellowship to yet another FISA Offshore World Championships held this time at San Remo in Italy. Once again, the Exmouth quad (Sam, Chris, Jack, Charlie and Ed) powered into the A” final, improving on last year’s performance by winning a 19th place. Watching, Brian O’Dea lost count of the number of Olympic and international athletes in other boats. It was, he said, “utterly memorable. These guys had managed to turn a shared passion into something really special.”
Oddly enough, Jack and Charlie already shared another passion – for competitive swimming. It was Charlie’s suggestion that Jack join the Exmouth Swimming Club and when Charlie realised that Jack’s times were getting uncomfortably competitive with his own, he figured that Jack must owe his fitness to rowing. “It was at that point that I started to wonder about rowing myself. Jack was turning in all these awesome times in the pool, and I thought ‘Rowing…yeah…I’ll have some of that.” And he did.
Achievements of this quality attract all kinds of analysis. Brian O’Dea is quietly pleased that the Fellowship were able to take on Exeter and beat them. That kind of hunger and resilience, he believes, is a product of the club’s unique mix of winter evenings on the Ergo, weekends on coastal work-outs in the sea boats, followed by a summer of podium finishes on the fine-boat regatta circuit. That combination builds stamina as well as core strength and gives a racing crew the edge they’ll need over the last five hundred metres. “Let our lot within a length over the last 250 metres,” he says, “And they’ll have you.” Brian also talks of competitive rowing teaching “life skills”, and he’s right, but the real recognition of what these guys have done surely lies inside themselves.
For Charlie Angel, the change has been profound. “Doing new stuff I’ve always been a bit cautious, a bit anxious, maybe a bit shy, but rowing with these guys has cured that. You can do whatever you want to do, whatever you need to do. Anything’s possible if you want it badly enough.”
Jack Pearce agrees. “From where I’m sitting rowing is the best team sport of all. Why? Because there’s nowhere to hide in a boat.”
This, as every rower knows, is true. But maybe Sam Malloy puts it best of all. “The real committment…” he says, “…is to each other. You’re stroke. You’re halfway down the course. You’ve got another K to go. You’re hurting like you’ve never hurt before. You’re in your darkest place. Yet you carry on and you try even harder – hurt even more – because you want to do it for them, for the three people behind you.”
“Yeah,” Chris Long agrees, “and if you stopped, mate, you’d never hear the end of it.”