Heroes to zeroes in only 12 years

The English Hockey Association, which is responsible for the Great Britain men's and women's teams, this year received £2.8m of national lottery money, with an additional £577,822 given to individual players to help their development under the world-class performance programme.

It did not do much good yesterday as the men were thrashed 8-1 by Pakistan - their worst defeat in Olympic history - and the women lost 1-0 to Argentina.

It was only 12 years ago that Great Britain's men were crowned Olympic champions after a brace of goals from Imran Sherwani settled the final against Germany 3-1 in their favour. There have been few celebrations since, with Great Britain (and England too) almost perpetually stuck in the rut of sixth or seventh best in every major competition. Yesterday, they slipped out of the top tier of nations altogether.

Curiously, if you omitted the goals from the statistics, this was not a thumping at all. It was almost a victory, for Britain led 12-5 on corners and 20-12 on shots. Unfortunately such a wealth of favourable statistics counts for nothing if almost every time the opposition get a corner they score.

By half-time Pakistan had converted three from four and were leading 4-1, three of the goals coming from Sohail Abbas. In the second half they converted yet another corner as they galloped towards the record.

Britain converted only one of their 12 in the entire match and the specialist corner man Calum Giles became a luxury they could ill afford.

Two defeats from two matches leaves the men in sixth and last place in their group. They are in danger of going into the 9th-12th place play-offs. Tomorrow they meet Malaysia and their coach Barry Dancer will have an almost impossible task trying to raise morale.

"It was a humiliating perfor mance and a humiliating result; we were bad in a number of critical areas," he said. What made it worse is that of late the Pakistan team have been no great shakes in the hockey world. They did not qualify for the 2000 Champions League, and in 1999 they finished last - and the team that put them there was Great Britain.

The men were probably looking enviously at the women's margin of defeat against Argentina. The Argentine captain Karina Masotta, playing in her 150th international, scored the only goal in the 14th minute.

This followed Britain's 2-1 defeat by the favourites Australia, but curiously they have not yet been consigned to the lower rankings. If they beat Korea tomorrow and Spain on Friday, they may yet qualify for the top-six play-offs.