Brave GB Women go down to Austria

A BATTLING performance from Great Britain women was not enough to stop them suffering a 31-23 defeat to Austria in their final Group game at the London Handball Cup on Friday.

After beating Angola in a surprise 22-20 victory in their first match on Wednesday, Great Britain had high hopes of reaching the semi finals of the competition. But when Angola beat Austria by two goals on Thursday that left GB having to beat Austria to keep their hopes of winning the tournament alive.

Despite some great periods of pressure against Austria, Great Britain were behind for much of the game. They found themselves 6-1 down after just 11 minutes, but battled back hard to 9-7 just 12 minutes later.

However, they could not stop Austria scoring steadily, with Acimovic causing problems throughout and ending as their top scorer with six goals.

For GB, Scottish-born Zoe Van Der Weel ended as top-scorer with four goals, while Aldershot’s Kelsi Fairbrother, Warrington’s Holly Lam-Moores and Ewa Palies all chipped in with three.

“We had a fantastic result against Angola on Wednesday, but we didn’t play our best today,” said head coach Jesper Holmris afterwards.

“Our defence was disappointing, we didn’t intend on letting them score 31 goals, and our shooting needs to improve. But we’ve made massive progress in the last year and we will come back stronger.

“It’s nice to have a good crowd here, it makes a great atmosphere and it’s really good to see so many kids here.”

GB's final match of the tournament will be the 5th/6th play-off match against Slovakia on Saturday at 11.30am.