Eight consecutive wins to Oxford. When would it stop?

J.C.Tinne had been elected President of OUBC and had no less than five Blues from the previous year’s successful crew filling the stern seats, though he rowed them in a different order.

Training went well and with their reputation they came to the Tideway as favourites.

W.H.Anderson the Cambridge 1869 President also had almost a full crew of old Blues, but he recognised that Cambridge had lost its old rowing technique, that their style was hopeless and that they were never going to win while they persisted in this mode.

He therefore invited Mr George Morrison the old Oxford President (1860,1861) and successful coach of Oxford during the 1860s, to come over to coach Cambridge and Morrison agreed, though in fact he was not available until relatively late in the training period.

Five of the six old Blues immediately refused to row and only W.F.MacMichael supported his President. He had to rebuild his whole crew, but among the people that he put in, to stroke the boat was a J.H.D.Goldie who had just come up from Eton where he had already been a successful stroke.

The crew was subject to repeated changes in order during training, but eventually a good order was established, with, more importantly most of the bad rowing habits which had become established in previous years, consigned to the waste bin and the crew began to really look like a winning one. But then, only four days before the race, P.H.Mellor (No 7) developed a quinsy and had to withdraw.

Anderson telegraphed J Still who had been President in 1968 and had gone down and was reading for Holy Orders asking that he come back. A new man, with a different style, rowing at the vital position of 7. It was too much to ask any crew - and Oxford won again.