The incredible story of GB’s last overseas Olympic odyssey

Steve Menary is the author of GB United? British Olympic Football and the End of the Amateur Dream. In this guest post, he covers the last time a Great Britain (GB) Olympic football team was assembled for an overseas Olympic tournament – 1960 in Rome.

This summer was supposed to see the return of a combined Great Britain football team at the Tokyo Olympics, until coronavirus struck and the Games were postponed.

The last time that a GB football team played in an Olympics outside Britain was 60 years ago this month (August 1960) when a team of part-time players produced one of the team’s greatest but often forgotten performances.

In 1960, only amateurs could take part, but the woolly notion of amateurism was wildly open to interpretation. In Eastern Europe, players were often state employees who played football full-time. This uneven challenge and the success of FIFA’s World Cup meant that the Olympic football tournament was being left behind.

The GB footballers who went to Rome mostly played in the Isthmian or Northern Leagues, where the amateur credo was widely abused by secret payments to players.

Matt Busby and Walter Winterbottom had coached previous GB sides but in Rome, the side was led by diffident former World War One RAF pilot Norman Creek, who could not believe an amateur would take money.

A former Corinthians player, Creek remains the only manager to get through Olympic qualifiers with GB qualifying unbeaten ahead of the Netherlands and Republic of Ireland. 

A young Bob Wilson and Terry Venables were involved in the qualifiers but neither went to Rome. Welshman Dave Roberts had also been involved in the qualifiers but also missed the cut.

GB v Brazil

The squad included three Northern Irishmen, four Scots, and a dozen Englishmen, and first up in Livorno on 26 August were Brazil, where players under 20 were deemed amateur. The Brazilian side included Gerson, who scored in the 1970 World Cup final, and Roberto Dias, one of the few players Pelé believed capable of marking him. 

The only way to win, GB’s London-based Northern Irish striker Paddy Hasty, joked to fellow striker Hunter Devine was: “Play all 19 of us”.

Devine and Davie Holt played in the Scottish League for Glasgow amateur side, Queen’s Park. The other two Scots Ron McKinven and Billy Neil also played in the Scottish League as amateurs for professional clubs St Johnstone and Airdrieonians respectively.

Devine, Holt and McKinven all start against Brazil, and Creek’s undaunted side takes an unlikely lead immediately through Barnet teenager Bobby Brown. When Jim Lewis adds a second, a real upset is in sight until Stockton defender Tommy Thompson has his leg broken in a shocking tackle. The Brazilian offender goes unpunished. With no substitutes, GB are down to 10 men and succumb 4-3.

GB v Italy

With the parsimonious British Olympic Committee only willing to cover their expenses while still involved, to stay on GB must beat hosts Italy in the Olympic Stadium in a monumental mismatch. 

Lewis won the First Division title as an amateur with Chelsea in 1955 and was in his third Olympics but the veteran is now back in the Isthmian League with Walthamstow Avenue. Goalkeeper Mike Pinner played for Oxbridge side Pegasus and made the odd appearance in the First Division for the likes of Manchester United when they were short.

That was the extent of GB’s top-flight experience. Their opponents were the future stars of Italian football. In Italy, players under 21 were deemed amateur and the home side included future Azzurri legends Gianni Rivera, Giovani Trapattoni, Tarciso Burgnich and Giacomo Bulgarelli.

Neil takes Thompson’s place alongside McKinven and Holt in a defense marshalled by Bishop Auckland’s Lawrie Brown. Midfield was anchored by the tenacious Englishman Hugh Lindsay of Kingstonian, with Hasty, then of Tooting & Mitcham, Brown, Devine and Lewis looking to take the game to Italy – and they do.

Stadio Flaminio was packed with 45,000 raucous Italian fans. Pinner had played in front of capacity First Division but recalled “It was something different,” to John Moynihan in his book The Soccer Syndrome.

Initially overawed, GB soon fall behind to a goal from Giorgio Rossano – recently signed by Juventus for £20,000 – that looks offside. The Belgian referee pauses, seeming to agree, then waves for a restart.

Italy flood into the attack but cannot find any way past an inspired GB captain Lawrie Brown – who later played for Arsenal and Spurs – before Neil releases Lewis to put Bobby Brown through on goal. The teenager is tackled but gets away to equalise. Game on.

The second half is broadcast live by the BBC with the now familiar voice of Kenneth Wolstenholme at the mic. Britons, he muses, were used to seeing their teams overawed by continental European and South American opposition but not tonight.

Rivera and Trapattoni again surge forward. When they do get past Lindsay their attacks again founder on the immovable wall of Lawrie Brown. Neil, McKinven and Holt, who later made 231 appearances for Hearts and five for Scotland, easily mop up the loose balls.

The home crowd are agitated and the Belgian referee ignores a dreadful challenge on Lindsay. GB pause expecting the free-kick that the hideous challenge merits. None comes and the quick-thinking Rossano sends a low shot past Pinner.

A stoic Creek stays in his dug-out. His players do not react, they play on and continue to resist. Wolstenholme is so excited that he accidentally refers to the team as ‘England’ and apologises. 

Against the run of play, GB force a corner. Devine swings the ball over and Hasty taps in from six yards. The furious Italian fans rain cushions onto the pitch. 

“A mob, I refuse to describe them as fans, screamed and howled with nationalistic fury that could only recall pagan days,” wrote journalist Desmond Hackett, a Lancastrian who wore a bowler hat and cultivated a posh English accent.

One Italian player reacts by felling Barnet’s Roy Sleap with a dreadful tackle. There is no yellow card, but GB’s clerks, students and teachers are in the ascendancy. Italy finish the game on the back foot, hanging on for a draw. Wolstenholme describes the performance as that of a “great British side” before the referee’s whistle blow. The coverage stops and GB are gone.

Italy go on to beat Brazil 3-1 and qualify for the semi-finals, where they lose to Denmark. Yugoslavia won gold. 

The last of the amateurs

GB still had a game to play and travelled to Grosseto on 1 September to play Formosa, now known as Taiwan. Brown bagged a brace and Hasty another as GB signed off with a 3-2 win in front of a handful of people. A GB football XI never featured at an Olympics outside the UK again. 

The Rome Games still had 10 days to run and Hunter Devine paid out of his own pocket to stay on. Sat in the stands one day, the Scotsman struck up a conversation with a teenage American boxer who had just won light heavyweight gold. His name then was Cassius Clay.

Creek was still GB manager when the qualifiers for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo began but stood down midway. His replacement was an ambitious, brusque former schoolteacher called Charles Hughes. 

An arch pragmatist, Hughes believed the only way of countering the Eastern bloc sides in amateur internationals was the long-ball style developed by RAF Wing Commander Charles Reep. Hughes’ methods brought no success and he soon fell out with the other Home Nations. GB tried and failed to qualify for the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympics before the amateur distinction was abandoned.

The GB team disappeared before being briefly revived for the 2012 London Olympics, where they reached the quarter-finals but failed to capture the imagination.

Next year, a GB women’s side team will play in the Tokyo Olympics. For inspiration, those players should not look to the desultory performances in 2012 but to Rome in 1960, when the stirring efforts of the last GB team at an overseas Olympics merited the phrase, Great Britons.

Steve Menary is the author of GB United? British Olympic Football and the End of the Amateur Dream.