OLYMPIC FOOTBALL 1948

Since today is the day that our England Women's Football team play a crucial UEFA knock out tie against the very favoured Sweden, it is worth reflecting that on this day in 1948, Great Britain fielded a Mens' team at the London Olympics and indeed it was Highbury that hosted the match as recorded below. I'm afraid Women's football had not emerged as a serious option at this time.

Following the end of the Second World War, the first major world sporting event to be held in Britain was the 1948 Olympic Games in London. The official opening ceremony took place at Wembley on July 29th but three days earlier - Monday July 26th 1948 - saw the Olympic football tournament kick off with two Preliminary Round ties. In those matches Luxembourg beat Afghanistan 6-0 at the "old" Goldstone Ground in Brighton (attendance 5,000) and the Netherlands defeated Ireland 3-1 at Fratton Park, Portsmouth in front of a 8,000 crowd. Remarkable that Afghanistan made the journey. 

Great Britain then beat the Netherlands 4-3 aet in a First Round tie at the more traditional London venue of Highbury, then beat France 1-0 in Quarters, and lost to Yugoslavia 1-3 in the semi-final. GB went on to the Bronze medal match where they lost to Denmark 5-3, in front of a Wembley crowd of 50,000. So GB came fourth!

The top football crowd was 60,000, also at Wembley, who witnessed Sweden defeat Yugoslavia 3-1 to win the gold medal. 

One member of the GB team in 1948 was Scottish goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson who, 19 years later, was one of Celtic's Lisbon Lions who beat Inter-Milan to become the first British team to win the European Cup.

Bernard Joy, the sports' journalist, wrote at the time: William Ling rose quickly through the ranks as a referee. He was initially on the supplementary list as a Football League match official but even so, was selected to participate in the 1948 Olympics' football tournament. Ling refereed both the first round match involving Sweden v Austria (3-1), the quarter-final involving Italy (Denmark won 5-3) and was then selected for the Final between Sweden and Yugoslavia. The final itself turned on two penalty decisions early in the second half (both which were denied to the Yugoslavians) and which affected their temperament. The biggest crowd was 60,000 at Wembley which saw Sweden defeat Yugoslavia 3-1 to win Gold.  

Joy wrote: "The setbacks rattled the Yugoslavs, their behaviour got out of hand for a spell and they did not recover their rhythm. What made matters worse was when Gunnar Gren converted a penalty midway through the second half. It is true that Gunnar Nordahl was bowled over, but the offence looked no worse than those committed by the Swedish centre half Bertil Nordahl". 

Here is the ball used in the Olympic Final match at Wembley in  1948.