The Hockey Paper speaks to the fashion guru who may well have played a part in Great Britain’s 1988 Olympic triumph
Sean Kerly’s employment status in the 1988 Olympic guide was marked as ‘unemployed’.
Working in retail as a merchandise manager for a conglomerate of chains, Kerly’s day-to-day had involved monitoring sales and forecasting stock. When the Leicester-based Next purchased the business Kerly was working for, he was kept on to wind the business down. He then moved from Crawley to the midlands to work as a trainee in early 1988, the start of Olympic year.
Kerly was not a regular international either in the build-up, missing Champions Trophy tours and had just started a family. Travelling from Reigate on a Monday morning, Kerly would go back home midweek and return on a Thursday and commute back on Friday trying to play club hockey. ‘I was knackered and it wasn’t doing me any good’.
Eventually, he went to see George Davies, the founder of retailer Next in the 1980s.
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This article features an extract from Seoul Glow: The Story Behind Britain’s 1988 Olympic Hockey Gold, published by Pitch Publishing and available on Amazon
