Personally, I was all for Cambridge as I preferred the sound of the name. 

And by the time a red-faced Mr Swarbrick had come out to shoo us all in for assembly, I had grown passionate in my preference for…Cambridge.

At least one child in that playground, the one who started the whole thing up, must have realised that this instantaneous partiality had to do with the annual Boat Race between the two Universities.

The point is that it was a national institution. A Thing. 

There was never any similar shouting match in that space for, say, the finalists in the FA Cup final or the Wimbledon men’s singles. Or even the Election.

By then, indeed, Boat Race, shortened to Boat, had been irrevocably assimilated into the English language as Cockney rhyming slang for "face."

And this annual challenge on the River Thames’ Championship Course between Putney and Mortlake - 4 miles 374 yards, or 6.8 kilometres in length - laughs in the "Boat" of all other sporting claims to longevity.

Compared to the Boat Race, which first took place in 1829, the FA Cup, mother of all footballing trophies and first contested in the 1871-72 season, is a parvenu.

As are The Championships, Wimbledon, first held at the All England Club in 1877. 

I mean, I ask you, they had already developed antiseptics by then and steam-powered rail transport had been operational for more than 40 years…

Today’s men’s Boat Race, the 167^th edition, will take place on the Championship Course for the first time since 2019, with the 2020 event cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 race having taken place in closed conditions on the River Great Ouse.

Cambridge lead overall in the competition by 85 wins to 80, and are seeking a fourth-consecutive victory in the race due to start at 15.23 BST.

The 76^th edition of the women’s race, which has taken place on the same course as the men’s race since 2015, is due to get underway at 14.23 BST, with Cambridge seeking a fifth consecutive win.

After the uniquely challenging circumstances of the last two years, the return of the racing to its traditional venue is expected to attract around 250,000 spectators along the course for equally traditional pre and post-race revelry.

History tells us that it was two old Harrovian school-friends who began the Boat Race. 

Charles Merrivale, then at St John’s College, Cambridge, contacted his contemporary Charles Wordsworth - nephew of the poet William Wordsworth - who was at Christ Church, Oxford and suggested a challenge match between the rowing eights of the two Universities.

That first race was held on a 2¹⁄₄-mile (3.6 km) stretch of the Thames between Hambleden Lock and Henley Bridge.

Oxford - racing in dark blue as five members of the crew regularly wore the dark blue colours of Christ Church - won "easily". 

Such disdainful terminology, certainly inaccurate in literal terms, has always been an intermittent feature of this challenge.

It was seven years until a second race took place, with Cambridge winning by 20 lengths a on a 5³⁄₄-mile (9.3 km) stretch of the Thames between Westminster Bridge and Putney Bridge.

After two years of dispute over the event’s future venue - with Oxford preferring Henley and Cambridge wanting London - the 1839 edition, and the races over the next three years, took place on the same Westminster to Putney course.

After another hiatus of two years, the 1845 race - which Cambridge won by 10 lengths - took place on what has since become the traditional Championship Course for the Dark Blues of Oxford and the Light Blues of Cambridge. Properly off and running.

Since its inception, the Boat Race has offered England in particular and the world in general a sporting narrative that has featured a succession of notable dramas.

The first of them occurred in 1877 when the race was declared a dead heat, with both crews finishing in 24min 8sec in bad weather.

However, the verdict of the race judge, John Phelps, was undermined by suggestions that Oxford had won - suggestions that emanated, not surprisingly, from Oxford.

At its most lurid, the account of the affair involved Phelps, who was over 70 and blind in one eye, and was also asleep under a bush at the conclusion of the race, only awakening to drunkenly slur "Dead heat…to Oxford by six feet."

This version of history was eloquently rebutted in the programme notes for the 2014 Boat Race by rowing historian Tim Koch, who runs heartheboatsing.com.

"In 2003, a thrilling Boat Race resulted in a win for Oxford by just one foot," Koch wrote. 

"During the post-race television analysis it was confidently stated that this was the closest of all the 149 races as the 'dead heat' of 1877 was, in reality, a six-foot victory for the Dark Blues. 

"The viewing millions were told that this 126-year-old travesty occurred because 'the finish judge had been in the pub'…

"Through the years, many other seemingly reliable sources have repeated and embellished different versions of this tale."

Koch added: "The tragedy is that the popular stories concerning John’s conduct were simply not true and, in the words of the Boat Race Official Centenary History, '….no good grounds have been shown for doubting the rightness of John Phelps’s decision'."

He also cites another of rowing's renowned historians, Chris Dodd, that it was only after the Blues had returned to Oxford that they and the town "daily became more imbued with the idea that (they) had won."

Eighteen years before that contentious finish the Boat Race had seen the first instance of one of its crews sinking - in this case, Cambridge.

Both crews sank in 1912, Oxford sank in 1925 and 1951, and in the 1978 race it was Cambridge who succumbed to wind and waves.

Oxford had sunk on the course while training for the race and decided to fit splashboards to their boat. 

Cambridge chose to leave their boat as it was…

That 1978 occasion marked the first Boat Race appearance for Boris Rankov, who went on to earn four more successive victories as a member of the Oxford crew.

Dramas of a different kind attended the 1959 and 1987 editions of the men’s Boat Race in the form of crew mutinies.

In 1959 Oxford were seeking to end a run of four consecutive Cambridge victories. 

In the wake of the previous year’s defeat Oxford’s star rower, Yale graduate Reed Rubin, had questioned the coaching methods of former Olympic rower Hugh "Jumbo" Edwards, suggesting he went over to the United States to observe how Yale rowers had been prepared for the 1956 Olympics, where they had provided seven of the victorious men’s eight crew.

Rubin stood for the Oxford University Boat Club Presidency in 1959 against Ronnie Howard, who had rowed for the reserve Isis team the previous year. 

Howard, who won by one vote, agreed with Rubin’s point that more emphasis should be laid on technique than fitness training.

But he very much did not agree with Rubin’s later suggestion to adopt the Yale training regime and drop Edwards for a Yale coach, or even Rubin himself.

Rubin decided to prepare a crew of his own which would include all six of the returning Blues and new recruits such as American Olympic gold medallist Charlie Grimes.

He demanded of Howard that this alternative crew be allowed to train independently and challenged him to race for the right to represent Oxford in the Boat Race.

Howard refused, stating of the mutineers "if they maintain their point of view I shall do without them ... I have no sympathy for these people".

The Cambridge University Boat Club President Mike Maltby then said the Light Blues would not row against any crew that did not have the full support of the Oxford President.

Rubin said he would not row in Howard’s boat under any circumstances, but four of the former rebels relented and Oxford went on to win by six lengths - their largest margin of victory since 2012.

A writer for The Illustrated London News said: "the result was a great triumph for Group Captain H. R. A. Edwards, Oxford's sole coach, and for R. L. Howard, the Oxford President, who had to deal with the revolt - over rowing styles - in the Boat Club last autumn."

In 1987 there was another Boat Race mutiny, also involving Oxford, also involving another talented and stroppy American oarsman - in this case Chris Clark, who had been in the 1986 crew that has suffered its first defeat in 11 years.

"Next year we're gonna kick ass ... Cambridge's ass," Clark said. 

"Even if I have to go home and bring the whole US squad with me."

He recruited another four American post-graduates: three international-class rowers in Dan Lyons, Chris Huntington and Chris Penny and cox Jonathan Fish in an attempt to put together the fastest Boat Race crew in the history of the contest.

There were early disagreements over the training regime of coach Dan Topolski - who had been in the winning Oxford crew of 1967 and the losing one of 1968. 

Topolski subsequently altered the emphasis of his approach by adding more work on water.

But then a fitness test involving Clark and the Club President Donald Macdonald, won by Clark, prompted the American contingent to say they would not race in the crew if Macdonald remained in the boat.

However, as President, Macdonald "had absolute power over selection", and when it was announced that Clark would row on starboard, his weaker side, Macdonald would row on the port side and Tony Ward was to be dropped from the crew entirely, the American contingent mutinied.

After much private and public recrimination Clark, Penny, Huntington, Lyons and Fish were dropped and replaced by members of Oxford's reserve crew, Isis.

In the circumstances Cambridge went into the race as heavy favourites; but Oxford won by four lengths.

In 1989 Topolski and author Patrick Robinson published a book about the events, True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny, and seven years later a film based on the book was released.

Alison Gill, the then-president of the Oxford University Women’s Boat Club, later defended the rebels in The Yanks at Oxford claimed Topolski wrote True Blue in order to justify his own actions.

There was more high-profile controversy when the 2012 Race was halted for almost 30 minutes three-quarters of the way down the course because a lone Australian, Trenton Oldfield, deliberately swam between the boats near Chiswick Pier with the intention of protesting against public spending cuts and a growing culture of elitism within British Society.

When the race re-started the boats clashed, resulting in the oar of Oxford crewman Hanno Wienhausen being broken.

The race umpire John Garrett judged the clash to be Oxford's fault and allowed the race to continue. 

Cambridge quickly took the lead and went on to win the race. 

The Oxford crew entered a final appeal to the umpire which was rejected.

After the end of the race Oxford's bow man, Alex Woods, received emergency treatment after collapsing in the boat from exhaustion. 

Because of the circumstances, the post-race celebrations by the winning Cambridge crew were unusually muted and the planned award ceremony was cancelled.

An enduring fascination of the Boat Race has been the involvement of Olympians - future, current and even past.

Back in the day Boat Race crews were regularly plundered, and sometimes chosen en masse, to represent Britain at the Olympics.

One such who made the Boat Race to Olympics transition in the same year, 1952, was Christopher Davidge, who would go on to race in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics before serving as Britain’s Chef de Mission at the 1976 Montreal Games.

In an interview for Rowing & Regatta, the British Rowing magazine, a year before the London 2012 Games, Davidge, who died in December 2014, told me of the dramas involved  in his three Boat Races.

By the time of the 1949 Boat Race he was established at stroke in the Oxford boat which lost to Cambridge University by a quarter of a length - one "dead heat" apart, the closest margin in the history of the event until the 2003 Boat Race.

Elected President of Oxford University Boat Club the next year, Davidge was unable to row because of jaundice. 

Unusually, he was re-elected in 1951, and sat in the Oxford boat that sank in rough weather shortly after the start of that year's race, before suffering a heavy defeat in the re-run on the following Monday.

The 1952 Boat Race, in which Davidge was again at stroke, saw Oxford win by six feet. This was the famous contest rowed in a snowstorm during which the BBC radio commentator John Snagge made his classic, despairing comment: "I don't know who's in the lead...it's either Oxford or Cambridge!"

That year's Olympics, in Helsinki, offered Davidge another claim to fame as he secured a place in the team rowing in the pair with his old school team-mate David Callender, and they missed a medal by one place.

In more recent years, when Britain has become a dominant force in world rowing, some of its stellar operators have been involved in the Boat Race.

Four-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Matthew Pinsent rowed for Oxford in 1990, 1991, and 1993, being part of two winning crews.

Two of his companions in the men’s coxless four victory at the Sydney 2000 Games - which saw Sir Steve Redgrave claim his fifth Olympic gold - also took part in the Boat Race, although one of them, most unusually, did so 19 years later.

Tim Foster had been in the losing Oxford crew in 1997. 

James Cracknell, who won a second gold in the four at the Athens 2004 Games, returned to top class rowing nearly two decades after that Sydney triumph and, at 46, became the oldest competitor to be involved in the Boat Race as he helped Cambridge earn victory.

The winning British eight at the Sydney Games also had heavy Boat Race experience - Luka Grobor had been in the same Oxford boat as Foster in 1997, as had Andrew Lindsay, who also rowed in the 1998 and 1999 Boat Races. 

Keiran West had rowed for Cambridge in 1999 and went on the compete in the 2001, 2006 and 2007 Boat Races.

Ed Coode, who had rowed for Oxford in the 1998 Boat Race, was the unlucky man in 2000 as, after coming into the four when Foster cut his hand, he was removed again when the Foster recovered. Four years later Coode was in the winning British four at the Athens Games.

Others who have taken part in the Boat Race have gone on to earn distinction in other than sporting spheres. 

Andrew Irvine, who lost with Oxford in 1922 and won in 1923, perished along with George Mallory in a British attempt to climb Everest in 1924.

The pair were last sighted only a few hundred metres from the summit and it is unknown whether they reached their objective. 

Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's body and portable camera have never been found.

Lord Snowdon, who later married Princess Margaret, rowed for Cambridge in 1950. 

TV presenter and historian Dan Snow rowed for Oxford in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

In 1980 actor and comedian Hugh Laurie was in the Cambridge boat - which had been occupied in the 1934, 1935 and 1936 Boat Races by his father, Ran Laurie, who went on to win gold in the men’s pair at the 1948 London Olympics.

The 2017 Boat Race featured the rare sight of a former Cambridge rower, William Warr, in the Oxford boat. 

Warr, who had been in the losing Light Blue crew in the 2015 Boat Race, had moved on to do a PhD at Oxford and - despite getting the silent treatment from some of his former team-mates - helped the Dark Blues to victory. 

He was only the third man in the history of the race to compete for both Universities.

Another notable thread in the ongoing Boat Race tapestry was woven in on the occasion of the 1981 challenge. 

On that occasion Sue Brown became the first woman to take part in the men’s Boat Race as she coxed Oxford to victory by eight lengths.

The previous year Brown had coxed the Oxford women’s crew to victory in their Boat Race, and had also coxed the British women’s four to sixth place at the Moscow Olympics.

Odd fact. My old classmate, who later moved to Devon, would have been in that same Buckinghamshire playground when the chanting began - but on which side I don’t recall.