Kingsbridge hockey star Giselle Ansley battles for the bronze medal with GB team

Team GB's women's hockey team are battling for the bronze medal in the early hours of Friday morning. 

The team, which took home gold medals at Rio 2016, features ex-Kingsbridge player and KCC student Giselle Ansley. 

They play Italy for the bronze medal at 2.30am on Friday, 6 August, after losing their match against the Netherlands 5-1, dashing their hopes of a silver or gold medal position as they defended their title. The Netherlands was the team they had beaten five years ago to be at the top of the podium. 

Captain Hollie Pearne-Webb said: "We have had to show some resilience during this Olympic cycle and now we have to get over this quickly and move on. We’re a new group of players and we have a medal to play for. We have to get in the right frame of mind for the game on Friday and try and bring a medal home.

"It won't be easy but we are used to being resilient and it's our job to focus on that match and try and win a medal.

"It was not the morning we planned, yeah we are disappointed.

"Especially after how we played in the pool stages against them. We showed we can match them across large parts of the game but we didn’t show up.

"They probably looked at the pool game and how they can tweak things against us. We are disappointed but at the same time we need to get over it quickly because we want to come away with a bronze.

"We need to wait and see who we’re playing, look at today and work out what went wrong and why our basics were a little bit off. And put them right the day after tomorrow."

Good luck to the whole team! 

Photo: Giselle Ansley of GBR during the Hockey Women's Champions Trophy game, Great Britain vs Argentina, 2016