ROYAL Grammar School's rowing squad had another highly successful day's racing at Shrewsbury, with the promising J16 squad leading the way.

The eight, who are hoping to compete in the National Schools Regatta in two weeks' time, contested three races at Shrewsbury in different combinations.

In the J16 and senior four events, the full strength line-up (Rob Hooper, Rob Fisher, Doug Court, Nick Baker, Richard Soloducha, Colin Scott, Dan Bond, Richard Stratton, coxed by Abhijit Mohite) had few problems reaching both finals, comfortably beating Shrewsbury's second team on the way.

In both finals they met Shrewsbury's J16s, and beat them by about a length in each race. In the Novice eights with two subs on board they narrowly missed out on a hat-trick of wins, losing by three foot to a university crew.

Rob Gibson, their coach, said that he was delighted with their performances, but they expect things to be tougher at Nottingham, with Radley College seen as strong favourites.

In the small boats events, Bond and Hooper took the Senior Four Pairs title, Owen Raine and Dominic Whitehurst won Junior Doubles, and Tom Meredith and Will Sharp had their first wins of the regatta season in Senior Four Doubles.

The J15 squad made progress, reaching the semi-final of their eights event, which is their priority for the National Schools. In quads they lost out in a nail-biting race with Trent RC by just three foot.

The J14 Squad was also out in force, with three quads racing in different events. The A quad won their semi-final by two foot, only to lose to Kings Chester in the final.

The C quad won one out three races in their mini-league but the B quad (Nic Palmer, Manroop Bains, Andrew Stewart, Marcus Gorman, cox Rob Cumming) won all their races to take the group's second trophy in seven days.