The world's footballing nations no longer complain that while they field one national team, the UK turns up with four. After the failure of any of the home nations to qualify for the European Championships, the debate has become rather academic.

In football, as in Glasgow East politics, the burning issue is whether Britain is greater than the sum of its parts. Lord Coe thinks that a unified British team could win gold at the 2012 Olympics. The Welsh and Scottish Football Associations are appalled, fearing their status with Fifa might be compromised.

Now Sir Alex Ferguson has cooled expectations that he would manage the team. But the idea that it represents either an innovation or an opportunity to build flats on Hampden Park is wide of the post.

Not many British sporting successes have gone unsung, but the Great Britain Football team is one of them. Here is a heroic story of a world-beating side that ultimately lost because it played by the rules while the other chaps cheated.

Football was an Olympic sport long before Uruguay won the first World Cup in 1930. Great Britain won gold in the 1908 and 1912 Games. Here, it seemed, was a discipline, like rowing, in which the Brits were always in with a sporting chance of victory.

However, unlike her rowers, Britain's best footballers were professionals, and ineligible for the Olympics, depriving the GB team of players such as Stanley Matthews and Dixie Dean.

Unfortunately, during the 1950s, the determination of the British and other nations to play at least roughly within the rules was interpreted by the Eastern European governments as their opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of Communist Man. They simply claimed that their national squads were unwaged - with predictable results.

Britain finally gave up after its team - consisting of players from clubs such as Skelmersdale and Leatherhead - got mauled in the qualifying rounds for the 1972 Games by Bulgaria's suspiciously well-drilled World Cup squad. The FA abolished the distinction between professionals and amateurs soon afterwards and Britain has never entered again. For the record, Slough Town's Joe Adams holds the distinction of being the last man to score for Great Britain.

However, in 1992 the Olympic rules were changed to admit professionals, so football can again be contested on a level playing field at the Games. In 2012 the host nation qualifies automatically. Are the fans ready to belt out “Three Crosses on a Shirt?” - 96 years of hurt never stopped Lord Coe dreaming.

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