GB United?

Steve Menary

Description

GB United? is the story of the only time that the four parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland managed to settle their differences and play as a team in the Olympic Games. As the book charts the history of a team that played long before the World Cup existed but vanished four decades ago, the story of the lingering death of the amateur ethos in football unfolds. Told through interviews with dozens of players, GB United? is the previously untold history of a team that will reappear again at the London Olympics in 2012 and grab the world's attention.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781908051325
• Langue: English

Extrait

GB
UNITED?
British Olympic football and the end of the amateur dream
Steve Menary
FOR MUM AND DAD
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Abbreviations
Introduction
1: Origins
2: London 1908 and Football s Great Gentleman
3: Stockholm 1912 and Woodward signs off in style
4: Antwerp 1920 and a shock to the system
5: In/out, North/South
6: Berlin 1936 and a brush with evil
7: London 1948 and the Busby Boys
8: Helsinki 1952 and Winterbottom s Woes
9: Melbourne 1956 and too many Bulgarians
10: Rome 1960 and a very British failure
11: Toyko 1964, goodbye Norman Creek, hello Charles Hughes
12: Mexico City 1968 and a fragile alliance shatters
13: Munich 1972 and the last Scotsman in Britain
14: The End?
Appendices
Full Olympic squads and results
Amateur lasts
References
Photos
By the same author - OUTCASTS!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book would not have been possible without the help of a large number of people. I would like to thank the following in no particular order: David Barber at the FA, Malcolm Brodie, Rob Cavallini, Leigh Edwards, Alun Evans, Blair James, Alan Adamthwaite, Ceri Stennett at the Football Association of Wales, Ian Garland, Peter Holme, Paul Joyce, Peter Lush, Richard McBrearty at the Scottish Football Association museum, Jonny Magee, Steve Marsh, Neil Morrison, Christine Wreford-Brown and Becki Middleton at the British Olympic Association.
Thanks also to the staff at Ringwood Library, and to Gavin Hamilton and Simon Inglis for access to the archives of World Soccer and Charles Buchan s Football Monthly respectively.
A number of people from outside of the UK also deserve thanking: Roy Hay and Ted Smith (Australia); Borislav Konstantinov (Bulgaria), Vesa Tikander at the Sports Library of Finland; Artemis Pandi and Spyros Chatzigiannis (Greece), Petz Lahure (Luxembourg), K re M. Torgrimsen (Norway), Remco van Dam (the Netherlands), Dariusz Kurowski (Poland) and Martin Alsi and Tommy Wahlsten (Sweden).
I am again grateful to Jennifer Tennant for her translation, Andy Stevens, Oli Munson and Randall Northam for their editorial input and in particular to Paul Camillin and everyone at Pitch for publishing the book.
Most of all, I would like to thank all the Olympic players and their families who took time to talk over the phone or, more often, to meet in person to share their memories and make this book possible.
FOREWORD
Before London was awarded the 2012 Games, most people had forgotten we ever had an Olympic football team, and I was pleasantly surprised - and proud - to find out on reading this book that I had scored more goals than anyone else and jointly made the most appearances for the team.
Plenty of players that played for the Olympic team also won full international caps, like Vivian Woodward and Bernard Joy. During World War Two, my father, who everyone knew as Big Jim (I was of course Little Jim), also won a cap for England, but the days when amateurs could still play for the full England team were over when I began playing.
The year that I came back from India after finishing my national service, London hosted the 1948 Olympic Games. Football was tied by the maximum wage then. Becoming a professional did not seem so attractive to everyone and there was still something special about being an amateur, particularly as that offered a chance to go to the Olympics.
I was fortunate enough to get a good job with Thermos and played amateur football at Walthamstowe Avenue, where my father had also played. For all of the amateurs like me, the Olympic Games was a peak, something that we all aspired to be part of.
I was too young to get into Matt Busby s squad in 1948 but four years later I was called up by Walter Winterbottom for the Olympics in Helsinki.
I went on to play in the finals of three successive Olympic Games and although I later played for Chelsea, where I was part of the team that won the first division title in 1954/55, I was still able to play for the Great Britain team as I remained an amateur.
Playing for the British team was something special. I visited places few people of my age got to travel to such as Australia and Bulgaria, which was then a country that no one really knew anything about. At those Olympics we also got to mix with real sporting legends like Emil Zatopek and Muhammad Ali.
All the adventures that I had with the team, the games (good and bad) are all in this book, which brought back very many great memories for me, both of playing for the Olympic team and the players I played with.
In London in 2012 there will be an Olympic team again, and just as when I played, I am sure that all of those players who take part will have one of the greatest experiences of their lives.
Jim Lewis
AUTHOR S NOTE
The team that this book is about has at times represented England, Great Britain and even, on occasions, the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a clumsy title for a book and even the acronym UKGB NI does not bear much repetition.
Where the British team playing at the Olympics was put forward solely by the FA and only Englishmen were considered, the team is described as England. Where the side is drawn from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for clarity s sake, the team is referred to simply as GB.
This book features many abbreviations that are spelt out on first use and listed opposite as reference.
ABBREVIATIONS
The FA - The Football Association latterly representing England
The SFA - The Scottish Football Association
The FAW - The Football Association of Wales
The IFA - The Irish Football Association representing football in the whole of Ireland until the creation of the Republic of Ireland in 1921, and the game in Northern Ireland afterwards
IFAB - International Football Association Board set up by the Home Nations to agree on rules for the game and still dominated today by the UK
Fifa - F d ration Internationale de Football Association, football s world body
IOC - International Olympic Committee
BOA - British Olympic Association, previously the British Olympic Committee
AFA - Amateur Football Association, later the Amateur Football Alliance, a break-away faction set up by purists in reaction to professionalism in 1907
PFA - Professional Footballers Association, trade union for professional players
Gentleman - a footballer who plays the game solely for love and never for money
Player - a footballer who plays the game for money
Shamateur - a footballer who plays the game as an amateur but takes secret payments for playing
POMO - Position of Maximum Opportunity, a football tactic involving the most direct route to goal
INTRODUCTION
It would be great if our country could have a football team in the Olympics. To perform at the Olympics would be special for a lot of players. I might come out of retirement - if I m retired by then!
David Beckham, 2005
ON 6 JULY 2005, BRITAIN WAS ALIVE WITH NEWS THAT THE world s biggest sporting event was coming. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had decided that in 2012, the Olympic Games would return to London, bringing the best athletes from virtually every sport on the planet, including one that few in Britain associate with the modern Olympiad - football.
Of all the Olympic sports, football today seems most out of kilter with the original Olympic spirit. A game obsessed with money. Wages, debts, transfer fees all seemingly inflated beyond belief. But football was not always like that. Just like the Olympics, football s origins lay in playing the game for sport, for fun. Most people still play football that way today;the tackling rougher, the passes less accurate, but for no reward other than simply playing the game of football.
Britain s last involvement with Olympic football had petered out more than three decades before London won the rights to host the 2012 Games and the prospect of a home team drew great interest.
It would be great if our country could have a football team in the Olympics, said England star David Beckham after London won the bid in 2005. To perform at the Olympics would be special for a lot of players. I might come out of retirement - if I m retired by then!
But not long after those initial heady days, the squabbling over international football s greatest anomaly began. In the Olympics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is represented by one team in all sports. In football, the independence of the four Home Nations dates back to the game s origins. No one was giving up their autonomy.
The FAW will not undertake anything that would jeopardise its position as a separate nation within Fifa and Uefa, said Football Association of Wales (FAW) secretary general David Collins. Wales doesn t want to compromise its position as a separate nation within Fifa and Uefa. It wants to continue playing football internationally as Wales. And I must say that everything I ve heard from the Welsh media and the supporters in Wales fully endorses the [FAW] council s decision.
Fifa s statutes included a special, longstanding rule permitting the independence of the four Home Nations. In 2004, these statutes were revised as part of a centenary project. Fifa s executive committee discussed the British statute but its continuing role was not even put to a vote. Any of Fifa s 208 members can question the statute. A change would require support from three-quarters of Fifa s members but no challenges ever emerged because for many years there was little justification. London 2012 changed all that.
By late 2005, the Scotland Football Association (SFA) and the FAW had insisted that unless Fifa president Sepp Blatter back up in writing his verbal assurances that taking part in the Olympics would not damage their independence, they would not take part in 2012.
With the Irish Football Association (IFA) representing Northe