John Lewis was just twenty when he and an old school friend formed Blackburn Rovers in 1875, in his lifetime he would see the club he helped create win two league titles and five FA Cups. Lewis would go onto hold prominent positions in the FA and by the end of the 19th Century was one of the most well-known referees in English football, having thrice been given the honour of refereeing the FA Cup final during the 1890s. Clearly such was his prominence that even at the age of 65 he was selected to referee the football final of the 1920 Olympics, held in Antwerp, Belgium, and to be contested by the host nation and Czechoslovakia.

Assisting Lewis on the line that day was another Englishman, Charles Wreford Brown, a gentleman amateur who played football for Corinthians and England as well as being a talented cricketer and the man who (possibly apocryphally) coined the term “soccer”! Much to the surprise of the other competing nations the previous gold medallists from Great Britain were knocked out in the opening round of the tournament by Norway. Hosts Belgium received a first-round bye and faced Spain in the second round who themselves had dispatched the much fancied Danes. A 3-1 win saw Belgium progress and then defeat neighbours the Netherlands in the semi-finals to make it to a home final.

On the other side of the draw and playing an additional first round game, the free-scoring Czechoslovakia side ran up comfortable victories over the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia was a new State, born out of the post-war disintengration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Olympic Games would make a fine setting to announce themselves to the world. Having beaten Yugoslavia next up to be dispatched were England’s conqueror’s Norway, and then France in the semi-final to set up a final encounter with the hosts. In this final it was Lewis, rather than any of the players, who received the most prominence.

In front of a packed house in Antwerp, with crowd estimations between 40 to 50 thousand, mostly partisan Belgian fans, crammed in, and many more locked outside the Olympic Stadium, the Belgians raced into an early lead thanks to Lewis who flagged for a penalty for hand ball in the sixth minute. Robert Coppée of Union Saint-Gilloise, who had scored a hat-trick in the earlier game against Spain duly converted but only after extensive protests from the Czech players who protested that their goalkeeper Rudolf Klapka had been fouled in the build up to the penalty being awarded.

After 30 minutes Henri Larnoe had made it 2-0 with a fine strike, but less than ten minutes later the game itself was over. Again, it centred around a decision by Lewis who sent off the Czech full-back Karel Steiner for a violent foul on the penalty-scorer Coppée. The Czechoslovakian captain Karel Pešek of Sparta Prague left the field in protest and was quickly followed by the rest of his teammates.

Antwerp, selected as the site of the first Olympics since the cessation of the First World War in part due to its symbolism as a location of resistance to German aggression. Indeed many of the players in the Belgian side were World War I veterans like the Daring Brussels defender Armand Swartenbroeks who had lost his brother at the front and spent his furlough time during the War organising charity matches for his injured fellow-soldiers.

However, on the day of the Olympic football final Antwerp witnessed a mass pitch invasion by the Belgian fans and the Belgian army had to go onto the pitch and help the Czechoslovakian players make a safe exit. The Czechoslovakian delegation protested against the result and the standard of refereeing by John Lewis – stating: “The majority of the decisions of the referee Mr. Lewis were distorted” – but their appeals fell on deaf ears and Belgium were declared gold medallists while Czechoslovakia were disqualified and a playoff was hastily arranged to decide the silver and bronze medals, won by Spain and the Netherlands respectively.

Despite the fact that the match didn’t even make it to half time the gold medal remains the only senior honour won by the Belgian men’s national team to this date.

A version of this article appeared in the March 2024 Ireland v Belgium match programme.