HOW are the mighty fallen.

It may not have escaped your attention that it is 50 years since Bobby Moore and his England teammates lifted the Jules Rimet trophy. We were the undoubted kings of international football.

Fast forward half a century, and Moore's successors couldn't even make it out of the last 16 of Euro 2016, knocked out after being humbled 2-1 by mighty Iceland. Well, there's always Russia 2018...

Dream on. When it comes to footballing glory in this country, it generally pays to look back, not forwards. And not just 50 years.

Just over 100 years ago, at the start of the last century, Great Britain were the rulers not just of the waves, but of the football field, too.

A British team won Olympic Gold at London's White City stadium in 1908 - and then went and did it again in Stockholm four years later.

"The game was more advanced in Britain generally then than it was in the rest of the world," says former York Press sports editor Martin Jarred, now a freelance journalist and sports author. "We had quite a head start."

York Press:

Martin Jarred

So where did it all go wrong?

As the years went on, the gap between us and the rest just narrowed, and narrowed, and narrowed, Martin says. "And eventually we were overtaken."

Were we ever.

If you find the state of modern British international football depressing, however, never fear. Martin, who lives in York, has written a fascinating book looking back at the glory days.

No, not 1966. His book looks back instead to those two gold medal winning years of 1908 and 1912 - and to the men who quite literally placed Britain at the top of the footballing world.

Football was a completely different game then. Whereas today's pampered stars are multimillionaires whose every whim is catered to, back then it was an amateur game. Harry Stammer, the Stockton-born former York City player who was part of the 1912 GB team, was a steel worker by trade: a riveter and corker at a steel mill in Durham, Martin says.

Harry's is just one of many stories that Martin tells in his book - but since he had a connection with York, he's a good one to focus on.

Despite holding down a gruelling job in Durham, the young Harry somehow managed, as a 20-year-old amateur, to play a season for York City, who were then in the Northern League. The centre half made a huge impression on a football writer for the Yorkshire Gazette, who wrote of him: "Daring, dashing, a tireless worker, kicking, heading and even tumbling, all with good grace, your work in the field is ever serviceable.

York Press:

Harry Stamper

"You are not a 'flash' player, but an energetic, hard-working and unselfish one; your play is clean and your movements generally beyond suspicion. May your star continue to ascend."

It did: but not, sadly, with City. Despite his efforts, the club were relegated at the end of the season. Harry joined Stockton, who also played in the northern league - and impressed enough to be selected for the 1912 Olympic team.

He only played one game, replacing the injured Ted Hanney in the 4-0 semi-final victory against Finland in front of a 4,000 crowd at Stockholm's Olympic Stadium. So he didn't qualify for a winner's gold medal. And his international career proved short-lived: he never played for his country again.

But football wasn't finished with him. Harry continued to play for Stockton until 1923 - after which he went to Spain to become fitness trainer with Barcelona. He even turned out for the team a few times, although Barcelona then was not the mighty, all-conquering side of today. The Nou Camp hadn't been built, and it would be several years before La Liga was established.

Harry moved on to become player coach of another Catalan team, Girona, before returning to Stockton, where he found work at a gas plant engineering firm. He died at home in Norfolk Street, Stockton, at the age of only 49.

There was little of the glamour you'd associate with the life of a modern international footballer, then. But thanks to that Olympic semi-final appearance - and now thanks to Martin's efforts in researching his life and that of the other 22 British Olympians who played in those two gold medal-winning teams - the former York City player is assured of a small but permanent place in footballing history.

Which is perhaps more than can be said of the latest England generation. So far, anyway...

  • Torchbearers: How Britain's Footballers Struck Olympic Gold in 1908 and 1912 by Martin Jarred is published by Soccerdata, priced £14. It is available (including £2 p&p) via soccer.mistral.co.uk/