Oxfordshire schools and clubs met with little success at the Henley Royal Regatta.

The schoolboy eights of Abingdon and St Edward’s, Oxford suffered the same fate in meeting the eventual winners of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup, St Paul’s School.

Abingdon drew this outstanding crew on the first day, while Teddies progressed before succumbing by a smaller margin.

Radley College then went out to St Paul’s in the semi-finals by another two-length margin.

Also reaching the semi-finals were Headington Girls School’s quad scull, who won their quarter-final over selected crew, Surbiton High School, but did not have the pace to match Marlow.

First-round casualties included two City of Oxford crews in the club events for eights (Thames Challenge Cup) and coxless fours (Wyfold Challenge Cup) and qualifier Louise Hart, the Wallingford lightweight, racing in the open-weight international single sculling event, the Princess Royal Challenge Cup.

Meanwhile, There was no let up in training immediately prior to this weekend’s important Lucerne Regatta, the third and last in the series of World Cup events.

Selected for this are all the senior successful Henley crews, including Stewart Innes and Oliver Cooke as the second coxless pair.

Oxford Brookes’s Matt Tarrant takes a seat in the coxed pair, while his clubmate Scott Durant continues in the men’s coxless four. which will be looking for an improvement on their fifth place at the Varese World Cup.

Wheatley’s Frances Houghton, having returned to full health, moves back into the quad scull, the boat where she has already won two Olympic silvers.

Other crews to have focused on preparation for Lucerne by missing out on Henley include the men’s four, in which Brookes’s Peter Chambers welcomes back Jamie Kirkwood, winner of the last two senior trials.

Kirkwood replaces the other Brookes man, Joel Cassells who helped make the GB Under 23 quad scull go fast at Henley.

What will be most interesting is whether the men’s eight, with Oxford University president and Olympic bronze medallist Constantine Louloudis on board, can replicate, on a six-lane course, the dominance they displayed over the Germans in match racing at Henley.