Three went for interview, one was picked. Many, including me, were predicting Paul Darby Dowman was a shoein for this job but it proved not to be the case, instead the job was given to Steve Harris, recently asked to step down from the senior job it seems he has regained favour and is back on the payroll. To the outsider these appointments seem random at best, only a few months back one of the big cheeses was telling me not only about Steves shortcomings but also gave one of the reasons for Pete Almasis departure being that he was selling paddles which was a clash of interests with his programme job. With Steve now running his kayak business this seems to be double standards at best.

The under 23 job is a good role for Steve though who had a reasonably successful time here before, discovering the K2 of Brown/ Schofield. Will he be able to inspire again? Who knows, he has a mixture of athletes from the seasoned and cynical down to the gullible and fresh. Some will happily buy into his brand of motivation others may be harder to convince as they have been around for longer. Hopefully he can pull the group together and make the most of a pretty talented bunch of guys some of whom, under Pete, came very close to upsetting the seniors a few years back.

I am not giving up hope of Paul Darby Dowman being found a job though. In the tradition of cabinet reshuffles there will be opportunities opened where it suits.

My sympathies lie with Mark Hoile who has done a fantastic job in his role with the Talent ID athletes, essentially a hopeless task but he has done extremely well to produce some good technical paddlers in a very short time, notably being Rachael Cawthornes coach in the early days. It seems he has a good idea of what he wants from his athletes and it would have been interesting to see what he could do with some real talent.