1959-1960 Double Quadruple! The Invincibles.

The Maiden four of Neville Kerr, Mick Walsh, Alan Dixon and Bob Coutts, coached by Pat Harrison started the 1959-1960 season with winning form and set the tone for the rest of the year. This crew won four Maiden fours in 14 days, which was a record at the time. While it was common to win a double or even a treble in the bracketed system of races it was not often that the opportunity arose to win four in a row. No Maiden four in Victoria had ever achieved this feat before. It was made possible by the inclusion in the Christmas bracket the Victorian Championships on Lake Wendouree on December 19^th 1959. Here the crew won by 10 lengths then went on to win convincingly at the next three regattas; Nagambie Regatta on Boxing Day , Rutherglen Regatta on New Year’s Day and Yarrawonga on the 2^nd of January 1960. Not a bad effort given that Christmas also occurred in the middle of the two weeks and they had to travel hundreds of kilometres to attend the Nagambie, Rutherglen and Yarrawonga.

The same crew went on to win four Junior Fours starting at Footscray Regatta and dead heated with a Wendouree four at the Country Championships. This earned them the right to represent Ballarat. In actual fact the crew won the race by a canvas but as the Wendouree four was the much more fancied four and contained some of the “big names” of rowing, it was decided to call it a dead heat. Both crews qualified and “honour” for the Wendouree four was upheld, as a dead heat was far more acceptable than being beaten by a rang-dang Ballarat City crew who were just out of Maiden

The four continued their spectacular run of success, winning the junior fours at Scotch-Mercantile regatta this time deadheating with Power House then winning the re-row by 6 lengths. Not until the mid 1980’s would the club produce such an invincible crew with the talented and experienced Alan Dixon and Bob Coutts making them almost unbeatable.