Hannah Macleod celebrated making her 50th appearance for England with a goal in the quarter-finals at the Investec World League – and then set her sights on avenging an Olympic defeat to Argentina.
The 29-year-old former St Ives player marked her half-century of appearances for England by scoring the second goal as they beat Italy 3-2 to set up a semi-final with Argentina.
“I didn’t know coming into this tournament I was on for 50 caps, so it was a nice surprise,” said Macleod, who made her debut when she was 19.
“It’s not something I keep a record of, you want to play well in games and win games.
“It just makes you reflect on what has been but you can’t do that for very long as it’s always onwards. I was stuck on 13 caps for over a year and I thought that would be it.”
As for the win over Italy, she said: “There are certain situations within a tournament where you have to keep the game very simple. The Italians made it very difficult for us in the second half but we’ve not lost yet in the tournament and we would have taken that coming into it.
“It was nice to get a goal and having watched Argentina versus Italy, we all thought it would take us a while to break them down (they were 3-1 up by half time).”
Argentina beat Great Britain in the semi-finals at last year’s London Olympics, and Macleod said: “It will be a very different game against Argentina. From a team perspective, we will fare better against teams that come out and play a style of hockey that we’re more used to.
“It was great to play in front of a home crowd again and hopefully they will get very excited (against Argentina). It will be awesome.”
England take on Argentina in the last four at Chiswick at 5.30pm today.