By Paul Martin at Stade Yves-du-Manoir

SUTTON Coldfield’s Laura Roper helped Great Britain’s women breathe fresh life into their Olympic hockey campaign with a vital 2-1 win over South Africa.

GB had lost their opening two matches and fell behind to Kayla de Waal’s early opener before Amy Costello levelled it up.

Hannah French scored the decisive goal three minutes before the end of the third quarter, firing home from Giselle Ansley’s lofted pass.

“It was all about three points, so I was thankful to see it go in the back of the net,” French said. “It doesn’t matter who scores it.

“With the two previous matches, we were quite happy with our performance against Spain and were unfortunate with the result, whereas with Australia we were unhappy with what we put out there.

“We wanted to go out today and show what we were made of. There’s still stuff work on but hopefully we’ll go back and look at the video and come out all guns blazing.”

Team GB’s women’s hockey stars are among over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support.

They started on top against South Africa, with Ansley seeing a low strike well saved by Anelle van Deventer before de Waal diverted home a strike from a penalty corner in the sixth minute.

Costello responded by firing into the top corner via a deflection before French, who had earlier struck the post, netted the decisive winner shortly after a key intervention from goalkeeper Miriam Pritchard denied Ntsopa Mokoena.

Britain’s women won bronze in Tokyo and now go into their remaining group games with USA on Thursday (4pm) and Argentina on Saturday (9am) with a renewed confidence of keeping their tournament going.

“Back-to-back losses kind of sucked the air out of us but it’s tournament hockey, we still have two games to go,” added Costello, who is enjoying morning coffees with compatriot Andy Murray in the athlete’s village.

“It is about thinking forward rather than looking back too much, and dwelling on what could have been.”

“We’ll take all the momentum from this win and get ready for another big game.”

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