THIS week saw the 30th anniversary of one of Great Britain’s greatest team achievements.

It came on the Olympic stage with Richard Dodds leading his side to a historic victory in the men’s hockey final in Seoul.

It was on October 1, 1988, when Dodds, now a leading orthopaedic surgeon at Royal Berkshire Hospital, secured the gold medal thanks to a 3-1 win over West Germany.

Unlike now, hockey was very much an amateur sport in those days with players having to take time off work to represent their country.

In his early days, Dodds was a doctor and there was one occasion when his professor at Cambridge University managed to persuade two examiners to stay late one day so he could take an exam early and go away to Holland to play hockey.

His playing career took off and he became a regular for England and GB, going on to be appointed team captain for the World Cup and the Olympics.

Dodds, a member of Reading Hockey Club, is among many who look back to those glory years in a new book, Seoul Glow – the story behind Britain’s first Olympic hockey gold – written by Rod Gilmour.

In the words of Barry Davies, who commentated on the 1988 final for the BBC, ‘It’s a rattling good tale’.

The 224-page hardcover book is published by Pitch Publishing Ltd.

  • READING FC are assured of staying in the record books for at least another year.

Their 13 successive wins from the start of the 1985-86 season in the old Division Three was starting to look under threat from Liverpool, but their six-match run ended last Saturday when held to a 1-1 draw by Chelsea.

  • FORMER Reading FC star and now BBC Radio Berkshire pundit Mick Gooding was the chief guest of Reading-based Berkshire Vision when they held a golf day for mainly partially-sighted people at the Sand Martins club, Wokingham, on Monday.

He also took part in the tournament before presenting the prizes – and that meant handing himself one as he was in the winning team.