Great Britain’s women qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics after a professional 2-1 win over Chile in the second leg of their FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers.
Early goals from Tess Howard and Laura Unsworth made the outcome certain after Saturday’s 3-0 win in the first leg, and Mark Hager’s side put in a very secure display to earn the result they so craved.
After rebuilding under Hager, it has been a testing period for the women’s programme in recent months, but they handled this occasion with aplomb and the result was never in doubt.
Now they will rest, recuperate and begin to look forward a hugely exciting 2020; first of all with the FIH Pro League back in London and then the huge occasion that is the Olympic games.
Captain Hollie Pearne-Webb said, “It’s obviously been a massive aim of ours to qualify for the Olympics for quite some time. I’m really pleased and proud of the whole squad. Since the Europeans we’ve had a massive block over the past six to eight weeks and we’ve made huge strides forwards which has been because of the squad and competition within it for places. Training has been a much higher standard because of that. We’ve got two weeks off now but when we get back in that’s when the hard work starts. All of us will be competing for a place now, there’s 16 seats on the plane to Tokyo which we know we’re going to, so the hard work starts now.”
Great Britain 2
Howard (4′, FG), Unsworth (7′, FG)
Chile 1
Villagran (57′, PC)
GB win 5-1 on aggregate.
Great Britain: Hinch (GK), Toman, Ansley, Pearne-Webb (c), Unsworth, McCallin, Robertson, Howard, Owsley, Martin, Petter
Subs used: Townsend, Neal, Hunter, Costello, Watson, Wilkinson
Unused sub: Heesh (GK)
Courtesy of GB Hockey
