Great Britain defender Anna Toman was left delighted after helping the women's team secure qualification for Tokyo 2020.
Having
won the first leg 3-0, Mark Hager's side secured a 2-1 victory in the
second leg to seal a spot on the plane to Japan next summer.
Toman
is one of our younger crop of players who will be very hopeful of being
in the final squad for the games, and she impressed again at the back,
also scoring in Saturday's match.
She said,
"I’m absolutely over the moon. I think the girls went out and delivered
what we needed to do, ultimately, we’ve qualified and that’s the main
thing.
"I'm just so happy, we’ve been
working so hard over the past few weeks and I think we really put it out
there on the pitch today so it’s hard to put into words, but we’ve
qualified for the Olympics and that’s what we came here to do."
Reflecting
on the final whistle, she said, "I actually think it took me a few
seconds to realise it, Giselle was the nearest person to me and then I
just thought ‘oh my goodness we’ve actually qualified’, after all the
hard work and it’s finally happened. Everything is just looking forward
to the next eight months now.
"Today they were
two absolute worldie goals from Tess and Unsy, so it really helped us to
settle into our game. It was quite different from yesterday’s game, so
I’m absolutely thrilled for them and the team that we could get those
two goals early on, then we tried to work on getting more goals, it
didn’t happen, but ultimately we’ve qualified.”
Toman
scored her second goal in two games on Saturday, having previously gone
71 matches without finding the net. She said, "It’s hopefully something
that will become more of a habit for me, it’s nice being involved in
corners now, I’m just happy I don’t get a nose bleed when I’m up there
to be honest! A goal is a goal, I don’t care who scores it so long as
we’re winning at the end of the day.
"I think the crowd have been
fantastic, they’re always great at Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre
and always put on a good show. I just want to say thank you to everyone
who came out here and supported us, it means the absolute world to us,
thankfully we qualified and could do you all proud.”