Paris — Great Britain women’s coach David Ralph believes performances will come and his side is capable of matching teams like Australia over 60 minutes. However he admitted that “results don’t lie” in GB’s recent form in Pro League and two opening defeats here.
GB sit bottom of their Pool and now must pick up points, starting with South Africa before their following fixture against USA, two sides who have also shown enough form to suggest they are also in the race to secure a top four finish.
Australia ran out comfortable 4-0 winners over GB in Colombes on Monday evening.
“We started slowly and we couldn’t keep the ball and get settled,” said Ralph. “And I thought we did well for the rest of the first quarter. The second quarter, the game got away from us and they got momentum and put us on the back foot.
“We came out fighting in the third quarter really hard and ultimately we had moments to get on the scoreboard that we didn’t do. We had too many moments when the game got on top of us which cost us.
“We’ve created opportunities and we haven’t capitalised on it and we have to keep giving us opportunities.”
Asked whether these results represented where GB currently are in world hockey, Ralph added: “If you look over a period of time, results don’t lie and you are where you are.
“We’ve had some good results but the consistency of that isn’t where we would like it to be. We are capable of playing better than we did tonight like a team against Australia over 60 minutes.
“We can do better than this. I believe in this team.
“We have a lot of experience in this group and the Olympics is a unique tournament. The group phase is five games, which is the entire length of a EuroHockey Championships. There are ups and downs and you have to ride the rollercoaster of tournament hockey.”
Captain Hollie Pearne-Webb said: “It was frustrating after the game yesterday [defeat to Spain] as we played well there but weren’t at the races.
“We lost two games in Tokyo, we’ve got three games next so it’s very much about focusing on South Africa. It is not over – this is tournament hockey and there are ups and downs.”
