The British Olympic Football Team
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TO GB OR NOT TO GB: The British Olympic Football Team By Steve Menary The last time a British Football team became Olympic champions was in 1912 in Stock- holm. The cover of a magazine produced after the tournament shows a British forward on the attack against Denmark in the final. The Challenge Cup, donated by the English association, thus remained in its home country. It is correct, as Steve Menary writes, that the first great Olympic Football tournament took place in London in 1908, but the Olympic champions before that were also regarded as official. When they step out at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium When the first proper Olympic Football tournament on July 25th, Great Britain’s women footballers will be was staged in 1908 only the Football Association (FA) of the first Olympians from the host nation to participate England were members of the nascent FIFA body that in the 2012 Olympic Games. It will be the first time that had been asked by the International Olympic Commit- they have taken part in the Games. The following day tee (IOC) to organise the Football tournament in London. the men will follow them into action at Old Trafford. It The other three Home did not follow England in joining is 41 years since a British men’s team last took part in an FIFA in 1905, but the world body invited all four associa- Olympic match. Yet behind these simple statements lie tions to compete in London in 1908. a complex and intriguing story of national identity. Given the location of the tournament, failure to extend The four Home Nations compete as Great Britain in the such an invite would surely have been politically inad- Olympic world, whereas England, Scotland, Wales and visable, yet the other Home Nations’ lack of confidence Northern Ireland participate as nations in their own right in their own sense of nationhood in sporting terms and in the Football World Cup and European Championships. a wider context saw only England take part in 1908. The footballers of the four Home Nations of the United At a FIFA congress that year, the FA did propose Scotland Kingdom have only ever united to play as one team at and Ireland as members of the new world body but this the Olympics. The first officially recognised Olympic motion this was rejected on the grounds that FIFA would Football tournament took place in 1908 but it was not then also have to grant entry to each of the 26 Austrian until 1936 that an authentic "United" team was assem- and 12 German confederate states. bled to include players from England, Scotland, Wales There are also more prosaic reasons why only England and Northern Ireland. competed in 1908. Firstly, teams entering had to pay JOH 2 | 2012 27 Because of a diver- gence of views about amateur status and the rules system, the four British associa- tions left FIFA in the 1920s. It was not until 1936 that a British team took part in the Olympic tournament, but it had difficulty in beating China 2:0 in the preliminary round. The Official Report of the British Olympic Association states: "The display of the British team was far from impressive." their own expenses1 and for the Scots, there was another feeling increasingly disenfranchised that professio- concern. A report in The Sportsman news paper publis- nals had "too much sway in the FA Council"4, a separa- hed shortly after the 1908 Olympics ended posited the te England team for amateurs was created in 1906 and ludicrous idea that had the Scottish Football Association this team led by Woodward contested and won the 1908 (SFA) gone ahead and entered a team, Scotland’s starting Olympic Football title. Individual Home Nation teams did XI would need to be selected by only Home Nations FA participate in the Hockey tournament in 1908. then in FIFA - England.2 The Games of the V Olympiad were held in the Swedish Another factor to influence participation in 1908 was that capital of Stockholm in 1912. Two years earlier, the SFA the Olympics were amateur and the notion of Britishness and the Football Association of Wales (FAW), had joined in a sporting sense was generated by upper-class English FIFA and were followed in 1911 by the Irish Football gentlemen amateurs, who had first organised and Association (IFA). FIFA again officially made an excep- codified association Football. As Luke Harris argues: tion for the Home Nations, who would be allowed to "'Britishness' is the way in which British competitors participate individually, although this was quietly act on the field of play, many of these relating to the discouraged and Britain was again represented by amateur ethos of playing the game in a sporting and England’s amateur team.5 gentlemanly manor, and compete not to win, but for The outbreak of the World War I forced the cancellation the games’ enjoyment."3 of the Games planned for Berlin and the next Olympics Another dynamic in the participation solely of would not be held until 1920. By this time all four Home Englishmen in 1908 was that finding amateur players Nations’ associations had split from FIFA over defining was easier in England, which offered a proliferation amateurism and whether payments for broken time, i.e. of amateur leagues in the North and Southern East. period taken off work unpaid to play Football, could be Amateurs also still played in the English First Division allowed. Prior to this separation, the FA made a promi- at professional clubs and, although their number se to FIFA to send a team to Antwerp in 1920 to defend the was dwindling, some continued to feature for the full title that had been won in 1912 and this was fulfilled, al- England side, such as Vivian Woodward of Tottenham beit with less success as the England amateur XI lost 3-1 Hotspur. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland however, the to Norway in the first round. In these first three Olympic amateur game was centred on one or two teams playing Football tournaments, players with sufficient links out- in leagues against professionals clubs, notably Queen’s side of England to claim a foreign allegiance by today’s Park in Glasgow, Cliftonville in Belfast, Bohemians in standards did take part, such as Ronald Brebner in 1908 Dublin and Cardiff Corinthians. and Thomas Burn in 1912, who both played for London At the behest of the public schoolboy amateurs then Caledonians.6 London Caledonians was an amateur club 28 with playing criteria stating: "All members of the club ver exceeded.11 5% and was as low as 9.9 % in the late must be Scotsmen either by birth or parentage (mo- 1960s and early 1970s. During this same period under ther or father)." 7 Another London Caledonians play- analysis, the population in Northern Ireland ranged er with a Scottish mother, Eric Gates, played in 19208, between 2.8% and 3.1 % of the overall UK population when the British team had a Welsh manager in George yet 19 starting places in the Olympic XI were secured by Latham, but the notion of England being representative Northern Irish players, which is 7.2 %. of British-ness prevailed in all three tournaments. The only Home Nation not over-represented in the With the IFA now representing Northern Ireland, the British team using population as a reference point is four Home Nations associations remained exiled from Wales. Only three Welshmen played in competitive mat- FIFA during the 1920s in the on-going schism over ama- ches and the six starting places taken represent just teurism and missed the 1924 and 1928 Olympic tour- 1.6 % of those available, whereas the proportion of the naments, whilst the 1932 Games in Los Angeles did not UK population classified as Welsh by the ONS ranged from feature a Football tournament. In 1936, Football retur- 4.9% to 5.1 %. This can be partly ascribed to a lack of in- ned and for the first time a squad featuring players from put from the FAW, whose archive in Aberystwyth shows all four Home Nations travelled to Berlin, where a team barely any mention of the Olympics. Although Scots and featuring four Scotsmen, one Northern Irishman and six Northern Irish players joined Englishmen at the 1960 Englishmen beat China 2-0 on August 6, 1936.9 They were Olympics, no Welshmen took part in the team’s eighth subsequently eliminated by Poland in the second round. and last appearance in the tournament finals. After 1936, Britain entered the Olympic Football tourna- Between 1908 and 1960, a total of 155 places were ment on seven further occasions and, although the FA available in Olympic Football squads and data for this remained at the core of the administration, six of these period again shows that English players dominate, sides featured players from the other Home Nations. taking 122 of these places – or 78.7 % (see Fig 3). The exception was Melbourne in 1956.The Games that year were held in late November and early December. Fig. 1 This was in the middle of the domestic season in the Year Eng Scot Ire/NI Wales Northern Hemisphere and was a contributory factor to 1908 33 0 0 0 the non-participation of the IFA, SFA and FAW. All three 1912 33 0 0 0 were also concerned about cost.10 1920 11 0 0 0 Overall, Britain entered 11 international teams in the 1936 14 6 2 0 1948 27 8 3 5 Olympic Football tournament over a period of 64 years 1952 10 1 0 0 and a total of 150 different players from all four Home 1956 44 0 0 0 Nations featured.