Newbury rowers Matt Rossiter and Katie Metalli return to action for Great Britain trials

Newbury's rowers returned to action again at the weekend at both the GB Trials in Lincolnshire and the Rutherford Head on the River Tyne.

In his first competitive outing since the Olympic Games Matt Rossiter was on the River Witham in Boston for the British team trials where he teamed up with James Rudkin of Newcastle University.

After finishing an agonising fourth place in Tokyo, the Leander athlete showed that there is still plenty of fight in him for another Olympic cycle as the duo claimed a solid 8th place in the men's pairs event showing some real strength in the second half of the race – a performance which surely must have impressed the new selection team now headed by Paul Stannard.

Meanwhile Katie Metalli made the trip to Tyneside with her Tideway Scullers crew and ran out easy winners of the Rutherford Head.

After having beaten The Henley Royal Regatta champions Oxford Brookes a few weeks' ago at the Quintin Head, Tideway made the decision to foregore the Henley Head being held race on the same day to test themselves against different opposition in the North East.

Tideway, with Metalli once again sitting in the seven seat, led the race home – beating not only second-place Newcastle University by over a minute but the entire field in the afternoon session – including all of the elite men's fours and quads.

A performance made even more impressive given that Tideway raced the entire course with a broken seat and no cox box and consequently had no way of communicating with the crew.

Oxford Brookes meanwhile did race at Henley in what was billed as the race of the titans as both they and the winners of the other women's inaugaral eights from Henley, Leander came head to head.

Brookes running out easy winners by 17 seconds ahead of Leander on their home stretch over the Regatta course.