This achievement by a group of true blue amateurs playing with true grit professionalism was energetically celebrated at the time.

And following a three-month blizzard of media opportunities - principally for the demon centre forward, Sean Kerly, whose hat-trick had earned a 3-2 semi-final win over the world's leading power, Australia, and the newsagent from Stoke, Imran Sherwani, who scored twice as West Germany were beaten 3-1 in the final - this triumphant progress has been recalled at anniversaries in the manner of England's 1966 FIFA World Cup final win.

So it is that, 30 years on, a new book has been published about the hockey landmark, written by experienced sports journalist Rod Gilmour, entitled Seoul Glow - The Story Behind Britain’s First Olympic Hockey Gold.

It is a knowledgeable and painstaking account using a mass of original interviews which adds new depth and dimension to the appreciation of what will remain as one of Britain's purest and most inspiring Olympic success stories.

Coincidentally, this tale of sporting sacrifice and commitment provided the Games with the perfect antithesis to the dispiriting case of Ben Johnson, whose world record of 9.79sec to win the men's 100 metres was annulled after a doping positive.

As Gilmour - who co-authored James Willstrop's Shot and a Ghost: A Year in the Brutal World of Professional Squash, which was nominated for the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year - recalls, when Sherwani and Kerly were tapped on the shoulder to go for drug testing after the final, team coach David Whitaker joked to The Sun: "There's not a more genuine bunch of competitors than our boys in these Games. 

"The laboratory people can test all they want, but they'll only find British fighting spirit."

All the elements you would expect to be covered are contained in the book - even an interview with BBC commentator Barry Davies, whose reaction after Sherwani had given Britain a 3-0 lead in the final with just over 10 minutes to go - "Where were the Germans? But, frankly, who cares?" - has now passed into the annals of celebrated lines.

But what this book does better than anything before is to recognise and lionise the man who was chiefly responsible for imbuing the fighting spirit to which Whitaker referred. For the 1966 World Cup final, read 1988 Olympic final. For Alf Ramsey, read Roger Self.

In name, Self, who died last year aged 77, was the Great Britain team manager. But as account after account from the players he goaded and inspired in equal measure make clear, he was so much more than that.

This former club player, who had success managing Wales and then top club side Southgate before taking over his Great Britain duties in 1978, was absolutely intrinsic to the formation of the team ethic which built on bronze at the 1984 Olympics after defeating Australia and silver in the 1986 World Cup final.

As Gilmour writes, 30 years on, a majority of the players who were under Self's command - and it very much felt that way given his penchant for phrases such as "stand up like soldiers" and "don't drop your rifles, boys" - say that he enters their thoughts on an almost weekly basis.

Self drove his players remorselessly hard in training. And he would make a point of attempting to rile, or even enrage them, to test the power of their character.

"He was very hard and he simply didn't care what we all thought of him," says the 1988 team captain Richard Dodds. 

"If we couldn't hack his methods, we were out. He got it right most of the time and a few quality players bit the dust because of it."

Midfielder Richard Leman commented: "He had a [Brian] Clough style of management. Players never quite knew which way the wind was blowing on any day."

He recalls an early training get-together at Lilleshall where, having endured a punishing weekend, the players' thoughts were already turning towards a warm shower and a drive home. Self lined them up on a steep slope and got them doing fitness shuttles.

"Self would usually be carrying his battered Karachi King Super stick with an extended head and the gardening gloves he would wear," Gilmour writes. 

"The players called him 'Old Big Nose'. His eyes were intense. His future captain, Richard Dodds, says that Self's eyes were difficult to shy away from. You were simply made to listen and look directly."

Martyn Grimley recalled: "Part of his raison d’être as a manager was not only you had the skill to play, but to play international hockey was an examination of your ability to perform when questions were asked.

"If you didn't have the answer you wouldn't make it. It was, perhaps, a way of trying to see what was inside you and not what was on the outside."

Grimley recalls Self taking him aside in training and insisting he score past Ian Taylor, recognised for more than a decade as the world's leading goalkeeper.

As he attempted to do so, Self - having announced that he was going to be Volker Fried, a German centre-half with a "square head and built like a tank" - twice put him off by hacking at the back of his legs with an old hockey stick. Third time around, Grimley got his retaliation in first, cracking Self's shins. Perversely, he had passed a test.

Four years before the Seoul success, ahead of Britain's bronze medal match with Australia at the Los Angeles Olympics, Self went out of his way to criticise almost every member of his team. He accused captain Norman Hughes of taking English hockey downhill. The hugely experienced leader grew redder and redder in the face. He then called Dodds "a loser" who was more comfortable at cocktail parties. And so it went on. Finally, Gilmour reports, he came to Mark Precious, who worked as a Foreign Office official.

"And Precious…Precious? What sort of f****** name is that for a hockey player?" Self demanded. "You would rather be sitting in an embassy somewhere, drinking a gin and tonic.

"You don't deserve to be on this team. You've got no fight, so what have you got to say about that?"

Precious, who also had a PhD in economics from Oxford, duly stood up. 

"Well, Roger, what I think is that the players should all tell you and the coaches to f*** off and we're just going to go out there and do it for ourselves," he replied.

Self remained silent for a moment. "Fine," he said. "The bus leaves in 30 minutes."

It later became clear that Self had been concerned that his players were getting scared of playing Australia and was deliberately provoking their anger in order to energise them for the bronze medal contest. It worked.

But four years later in Seoul, Self demonstrated that he was far more than a driven disciplinarian as he spoke in complimentary terms ahead of the final, telling his players they were the best team in the world, and urging them to go out and prove it. He had never told them such a thing before.

On this occasion, however, he also took up a suggestion by long-time vice-captain Paul Barber, who was concerned that the players needed to be more focused on the task ahead and wanted to conduct his own challenging analysis of their abilities. Self stepped away as Barber laid into his team-mates.

Thus elevated by Self's rare praise, and energised by Barber's fierce rant, the British players produced an awesomely assured performance to claim gold, watched by numerous fellow Olympians whose competitions had already finished, including rower Steve Redgrave, who had just collected his second of what would be five Olympic golds.

Redgrave would have fully recognised a team of competitors who were "in the zone" from the first to - almost - the last minute. Only one result was possible on the day.

Self stood to attention as the national anthem played out and the Union Flag was slowly raised, his thumbs rigid and pointed downwards. 

He told reporters: "That, and only that, was what it was all about."