‘Don’t drop your rifles, boys’: How 1988 GB Hockey coach created team of Olympics winners

In an extract from his book charting Team GB’s Olympic hockey gold, players tell Rod Gilmour how coach Roger Self created a team of amateurs into top podium medallists

‘… And the speed of Sherwani too good for anybody’
Barry Davies, BBC TV commentator

It seems incredulous to think now that Imran Sherwani’s career was once stalling. Yet Sherwani still had to prove himself to England and Great Britain management as the 1986 home World Cup rolled into view. That he ended up with an archaic-looking fitness contraption, lugged from the bottom of coach Roger Self’s garden and strapped to the top of Sherwani’s unsuitable car, was probably par for the course.

Sherwani recounts a ‘toughening up interview’ at Self’s ‘mansion’. Some of the team, with their positions under threat, had been asked to attend, with players handed allotted times. And when it came to Sherwani’s appointed hour, he told the left winger to sit down in his office before describing a pivotal moment in the 1986 World Cup final against Australia on home soil.

This is an extract from Seoul Glow: The Story Behind Britain’s First Olympic Hockey Gold by Rod Gilmour