Oxford University’s Boat Race chief coach on Thursday admitted the controversial decision to substitute one of their senior rowers days before this year’s contest followed disagreements within the camp.

Sean Bowden confirmed that the replacement of Joshua Bugajski by Benedict Aldous from the reserve crew Isis was not solely due to the illness which disrupted the 27-year-old Blue’s preparations.

“I think it’d be fair to say that Josh being a more experienced guy, quite a strong character, yes we would have had certain times when we would have found ourselves in disagreement over some things,” said Bowden.

“I’ve never been through a Boat Race season without disagreements and healthy discussion is essential to bring a team together. Sometimes that can be more prolonged and disruptive than you’d like it to be, other times crews that are too malleable are not very good either.

“We had a number of issues this year with the boat not functioning as well as we’d like it to,” Bowden added at Thursday’s press conference ahead of Saturday’s 164th race, “and I think for whatever reason we found that when Benedict came in we had a good restart, made good progress.