Joe, Indian hockey’s ‘Cavalier’, passes away

K Datta

NEW DELHI: The story goes that the great Jesse Owens said to Joe Galibardy at the 1936 Berlin Olympics: “I can’t be sure of my gold medal but the hockey gold is yours!”

It transpired that both men won gold medals, in fact the modest Owens who was not sure how good a sprinter and long jumper he was, went on to win four.

But this is about Joseph “Joe” Deville Thomas Galibardy. He died at Walthamstow, England, aged 96. Owens died comparatively young in 1980, aged 67.

With the passing away of Galibardy, the oldest survivor of that great 1936 Indian hockey team, captained by Dhyan Chand, has left this world.

Galibardy started out as a full back but later switched to playing at left half. So solid was he in defence that he was nicknamed “Rock of Gibraltor.”

But when the mood took him he would sprint down the flank and cut into the centre for shots at goal. Such daring sorties, against all tenets of hockey of those days, earned him the appropriate sobriquet of “Cavalier.”

But a Galibardy could be so daring. He had the speed to recover. Galibardy missed the 1948 Olympics because his wife was expecting their seventh child.

There were many admirers of this BNR (Bengal Nagpur Railway) player, who began his first class hockey career in the Beighton Cup at Kolkata in 1935.

Joe, who hated his studies at Kurseong’s Goethals School, something that naturally worried his father, was offered a job in BNR as a locomotive cleaner because of his hockey skills and soccer talent.

A self-taught hockey player, he willingly imparted his skills to youngsters, his most famous pupil being four-time Olympian Leslie Claudius, the last of a line of great Anglo-Indian hockey players.