Lioness spirit Peel: Women’s sport must stay in spotlight
ENGLAND hero Flora Peel wants women’s sport to capitalise on the summer success of football and hockey.
Cheltenham-born Peel, who plays her club hockey in the Netherlands, set up both goals as England beat Australia 2-1 to win Commonwealth Games hockey gold for the first time in Birmingham on Sunday.
Victory came just seven days after the Lionesses had won Euro 2022 at Wembley to raise the profile of women’s sport in England like never before.
Peel said: “We had a couple of messages from some of the Lionesses (on Sunday morning).
“They said the previous group of ours (Great Britain’s women won the Olympic title at Rio in 2016) had inspired them, and they hoped they did the same for us.
“They definitely have, and our win will keep raising the profile of the sport.
“You’ve seen with the Lionesses what it’s done for them.
“After Rio we had a big boost and then it dropped off a bit. But at the moment women’s sport is really taking off .
“It’s about capitalising on those opportunities and hopefully women’s sport will continue to grow.”
Australia had won four of the six women’s competitions since hockey was introduced to the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and had conceded only once before the final.
But England’s win was well merited, with Holly Hunt and Tess Howard scorshe ing before the Hockeyroos managed a later consolation inside the final 20 seconds.
Peel threatened with early raids into enemy territory and she burst down the right to feed Hunt, who trapped the ball perfectly and cracked her shot past Aleisha Power in goal.
England doubled the lead four minutes later with Peel again playing provider for Howard to deftly deflect into the roof of the net.
Peel’s great-grandfather (to the power of five) was Sir Robert, the twotime Prime Minster and creator of the Metropolitan Police service.
won the British Slalom Championships as a 12-year-old skier before hockey took over.
Born in Cheltenham after the family moved south from Lancashire, Peel has been based in Holland in recent seasons, a move which rules out most England or GB players other than goalkeeper Maddie Hinch due to central programme commitments.
She had signed to stay out in The Hague but, after joining the programme full-time in January, days later she was flying out to Argentina for her first FIH Pro League games.