Anna Toman: How England women created the buzz to land Commonwealth hockey gold

Our columnist looks back on a glorious summer which included Commonwealth gold as England women won their first major title in seven years in Birmingham

We get a real buzz from our team defence. Historically it’s been huge for us and there is a sense of English grit about how we go about things. But as a team we had lost sight of it and we had been leaking open field goals.

We had started rebuilding at the World Cup. The real turning point for us came in the China game, our last Pool game at the World Cup which was effectively a knock-out game before the rest of the knock-out games. 

There’s no hiding from the fact that you can feel the buzz on the pitch when players are doing their jobs and making tackles.

What do you think? Join our forum for free and keep the discussion going