Spain play Great Britain women for a place in the Olympic Hockey semi-finals, with Englishman Adrian Lock aiming to atone for a reverse of Rio quarter-final defeat
When Spain won women’s 2018 World Cup bronze there was no victory parade like the sea of green experienced in Dublin on Ireland’s return.
Yet Adrian Lock, the Englishman who has overseen Spain’s rise in the women’s game, had never received so many congratulatory messages in the aftermath. Men’s hockey in Spain still rules but Lock still noticed an influx of women’s observers who had watched from afar.
“We didn’t get more funding and we still struggle but there are teams a lot worse than us and it wasn’t going to change after one result,” he told The Hockey Paper last year. “I thought after the (men’s and women’s) teams got eighth and fifth in Rio and not many team sports got their Olympic diploma, but it wasn’t to be. But we’ve kept going and the girls are motivated.”
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