The last goal scored by GB in the Olympic finals....

There is of course a perfect symmetry about the Olympics coming back to London this summer. The last time the Olympics were here, was in 1948 and they were labelled the ‘Austerity Games’. But thanks to the foresight of Tony Blair and Seb Coe we are just a few days away from celebrating this summer’s event……. during a period of painful belt tightening.

And despite David Beckham’s absence from Stuart Pearce’s squad, Team GB will be fielding a team in the football tournament for the first time since 1960.

Yes, it is hard to believe but Great Britain’s last appearance at the games was in Rome in 1960, just a few months before I experienced my first game at the Recreation Ground, Aldershot.

On August 26th Britain lost the opening game of the tournament 4-3 to a Brazilian side that included Gerson, who would go on to play alongside Pele and the many other legends of the 1970 World Cup winning team.

Just three days later, in Rome, GB played out a 2-2 draw with the host nation, who included current Republic of Ireland boss Giovanni Trapattoni. But unfortunately not even a 3-2 victory in Grosseto over Chinese Taipei, now Taiwan, could save the squad from a return flight home well before the closing ceremony.

The GB team in 1960 featured seven Englishmen and two players each from Scotland and Northern Ireland. The team only featured amateur players, as the rules required. Most were little-known, although Jim Lewis had helped Chelsea win the league in 1955.

For the first time in Olympic history the 1960 football tournament was conducted with a preliminary round featuring round-robin pools. Hungary were the pre-tournament favourites, and survived the group stage with ease. But the 1952 champions were halted by the surprising Danish amateur side. Denmark entered the games with a depleted squad and heavy hearts, as eight Danish footballers had died in a plane crash shortly before the 1960 Olympic tournament. In an exciting semi-final, where both sides missed a penalty kick, Denmark came out the deserved winner 2v0.

The other semi-final was a much closer affair. The home team, Italy, was paired with Yugoslavia, who like all of the ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries fielded a side brimming with ‘professionals’. After 120 minutes of play both teams were still tied and with no time in the tight schedule to organise a replay, and with the present-day tie-breaker of taking penalties not yet in use, it was left to the toss of a coin…..Italy lost leaving Trappattoni and Gianni Rivera to be consoled only with their thoughts of future wealth and glory in Serie A.

Yugoslavia went on to win the final…….

But what future wealth and glory could our boys expect when they stepped down from the plane after the return flight from Rome?

Pinner, Greenwood, Holt, McKinven, Brown (L), Forde, Lewis, Brown (B), Lindsay, Howard and Patrick Hasty

Patrick (Paddy) Hasty was born in Belfast in March 1932 and sadly died in 2000. He lived much of his life in Aldershot and represented the local schools on many occasions. At the time of the Olympics Paddy was ‘on the books’ at Tooting and Mitcham but when he got back to the UK he was quickly snapped up by the Shots and he signed as an amateur on September 23rd 1960.

Hasty scored twice in the 1960 tournament and his second, in the 3v2 win over Chinese Taipei, was the last goal to be recorded by a GB player until…….

Paddy signed professional terms for the Shots in March 1961 and went on to wear the famous red and blue 41 times scoring 18 goals including a memorable brace in one of my ‘early years highlight games’ – a 3v1 FA Cup victory over Tunbridge Wells in November 1961.

I wonder if our current crop of ‘professionals’ representing Team GB will be remembered with such fondness in 2064?