HAZEL Musgrove and the TeamGB women’s water polo team will have at least one more game in the London Olympics.
Although they bowed out of the main competition with a 9-7 loss to Spain in the quarter finals on Sunday, they now enter the 5th-8th classification semi finals Musgrove and Co will face Russian Federation, whom they lost to 7-6 in the opening game of Group B, at the Water Polo Arena on the Olympic Park in London on Tuesday at 6.20pm.
Musgrove scored her first goal of the tournament in the narrow defeat to Spain.
It came three minutes into the third quarter and cut the deficit to 6-4 at that stage.
Team GB went into the quarter final after finishing bottom of their preliminary group after losing their three games.
All teams from the two groups – eight teams in total - progressed to the quarter-finals, for which teams were then seeded.
World junior champions Spain went into the game with TeamGB having won their preliminary group with two wins and a draw but despite their impressive form fell behind to winless Team GB.
The hosts opened the scoring as Francesca Painter-Snell converted a penalty but that only spurred Spain into action as they swiftly restored parity and set about building a lead.
At half-time Team GB trailed 6-2 but to their credit remained in touch with their highly-regarded opponents as they worked tirelessly in a crowd-pleasing performance.
Francesca Painter-Snell shone for Team GB with a further two goals as a hugely impressive team performance saw them run medal contenders Spain close to the brink of an unthinkable exit.
Centre forward Angie Winstanley-Smith said: “We did ourselves very proud and we gave it everything we had.
"We are a very young team. We have improved so much over the last four years and, hopefully, if we do the same again over the next four years we will be in with a chance of a medal, for sure.
“Four years ago we were losing to Russia by 20 goals, so we have come on so much."
Musgrove played for 11 minutes in Friday’s final group game, a 10-5 loss to a vastly more experienced Italy.
Although their defence was massively improved from the 16-3 loss to Australia, their offence was lacking and they wasted many two-on-one attacks and struck the woodwork several times.
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