This represents Great Britain’s best Olympic result since 1996 and qualifies them a place in next years elite six nation Champions Trophy tournament where they will gain further valuable experience of competing against the best teams in the world as they now look forward towards London 2012.

Today’s match was a tight affair with both sides enjoying their fair share of possession but unable to create an abundance of clear cut goal opportunities. Welsh wonder, Sarah Thomas came closest to putting Team GB on the scoresheet only to see her second half goal goal disallowed for an infringement.

The Australian ‘Hockeyroos’ made the breakthrough in the 29^th minute as Madonna Blyth drilled home a bouncing ball on the volley, giving Great Britain goalkeeper Beth Storry no chance.

Team GB began the second half with a fresh impetus and won a pair of short corners in quick succession. The second corner saw Sarah Thomas crash the ball into the back of the net via the inside of the post. The umpire instinctively awarded the goal, but after a short delay, was over-ruled by the video replay which deemed the ball to have approached the goal above the acceptable height for a penalty corner strike.

Australia also had the ball in the Great Britain goal on two further occasions, but both were ruled out for infringements leaving Team GB trailing by just a single goal as they entered the final five minutes of the game.

At this point, Team GB Head Coach Danny Kerry decided to throw caution to the wind and replaced goalkeeper Storry with Crista Cullen instated as kicking back, meaning Britain were effectively playing without a last line of defence.

Australia took full advantage of the situation as the impressive Hope Munro picked up a loose ball and slotted it past stand-in goalkeeper Cullen with two minutes remaining to leave the final score at 2-0.

After the game Kerry summed up the performance, "Overall I’m pleased with how we set about and applied our game, especially considering the heat. At 1-0 I thought we were very much in the game and I felt we had the momentum. We had chances, which we didn’t put away."

Forward Chloe Rogers said, "I felt we played well. We put them under pressure but just couldn’t turn it into goals. It just didn’t go our way." Assessing the overall performance during the tournament she said, "We have come a long way as a team. We fought back from being 1-0 and 2-0 down against New Zealand and Argentina respectively to get something from those games. We finished above our world ranking and played reasonably well. It is a good achievement."

Rogers is positive when looking to the future, "We need to move on and do better in London. We are going in the right direction and need to keep climbing the world rankings to go into London 2012 with the belief that we can do well."

Jennie Bimson was the only Team GB player to announce her retirement from international hockey after today’s match, meaning that Kerry has a large pool of experience to add to in the near future, "We’ve included a lot of young players in the GB programme over the (past four year) Olympic cycle and I’m excited about that. I’m very optimistic about what we can do," he said.

Team GB’s men’s hockey players face Korea in the 5^th-6^th classification match tomorrow at 11am (4am BST).