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Neville D’Souza, India’s only Olympic football hat-trick scorer, is back in the spotlight after protests over a football ground named after him in Bandra. The Goa-born striker created history at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics by scoring three goals against Australia. Despite his remarkable achievement, his legacy remains largely forgotten, resurfacing only occasionally through major events.

It is the sad fate of the late legendary footballer Neville D’Souza that his name enters the national consciousness only every quarter of a century or so. D’Souza, who died in Mumbai on March 16, 1980, aged 47, began his career with Goan Sports Club before joining Tata’s in Mumbai and then Caltex Football Club. He was born in Assagao, Goa, on August 3, 1932. But he is best known for scoring a hattrick against hosts Australia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Currently, D’Souza is in the news as the football ground named after him in Bandra’s Reclamation is set to be taken over by the BMC to build a convention centre, leading to a storm of protests by football lovers across the metropolis.

D’Souza returns to public attention

It was in August 2000 that he had cropped up, 20 years after his passing, when answering a question about him would have made a Kolkata shopkeeper the first grand-prize winner of Rs 1 crore on the popular TV quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati, presented by Amitabh Bachchan. Ramesh Dubey had successfully reached the penultimate round when his final question was: “Who is the only Indian to score a hat-trick in Olympic football?” Dubey, not wanting to take a chance, gave it a miss and settled for Rs 50 lakh. The three other options were P.K. Banerjee, Shabbir Ali and Sailen Manna.

This led to renewed public interest in the story of D’Souza and that fabled hattrick.