Sarah Robertson marked her 150th international cap with the winner as Great Britain scored a morale-boosting 2-1 win over Belgium in the FIH Pro League.
The Scot deflected home a superbly-worked penalty corner, engineered by Grace Balsdon and Anna Toman, to seal GB’s second victory of the disrupted Pro League season.
It completes a week in which the reigning Olympic champions suffered defeat to Netherlands on Tuesday and Thursday and took two points in Saturday’s opening game in Brussels.
“We’re just a really resilient team,” said Fiona Crackles, the 19-year-old defender from Durham University who made her GB bow on Tuesday and featured in all four games.
“We’ve had three games in a week and we’re feeling it in our legs, but it didn’t matter. We knew we had to leave nothing in the tank and we could win it in that last quarter.
“We’re really happy with the week. We came into the final game knowing we had to win - nothing less - and we put a massive shift into what was a well-fought match.”
Mark Hager’s side made another fast start and Tess Howard was once again at the centre of things when she narrowly failed to add a goalscoring touch to Lily Owsley’s pass.
GB got the opener on 11 minutes the previous day and they hit the front on 14 minutes this time, Owsley deflecting home a penalty corner from a central position.
Get in! 👊
— Great Britain Hockey (@GBHockey) November 1, 2020
We take victory in Brussels thanks to goals from @LilyOwsley & @SarahRobertson_ 🙌#BELGBR #ThePride🦁 #FIHProLeague pic.twitter.com/qiC8WIBZdK
Belgium levelled terms moments into the second quarter, however, a move down the right finished off from close range by Barbara Nelen.
An edgy second quarter saw Britain denied at two penalty corners and the lively Ellie Rayer given a two-minute green card suspension.
The visitors grew into the second half and after a botched first attempt, Balsdon teed up Toman whose low slap was flicked in by a diving Robertson, also bringing up a half-century of GB caps, for the eventual winners.
Britain managed the game well - not conceding a shot in the fourth quarter and only allowing the hosts into their circle once - as they ended their European tour with an encouraging win.
Danny Kerry's men tasted 2-1 defeat in the second half of Sunday's double-header despite taking the lead through David Condon in the first quarter.
Condon tapped home the loose ball from a penalty corner on ten minutes to leave the world number one side chasing the game.
Belgium bit back as John-John Dohmen and penalty corner specialist Alexander Hendrickx both struck in the second quarter to put the game beyond Britain.
Striker Alan Forsyth had a couple of chances to drag his side back into the contest in the second half but it was a tale of missed opportunities for GB once again.
"We wanted to go out with a fast start to the game," said Zach Wallace.
We felt yesterday we had quite a lot of chances, so we thought if we could go out play forward directly then we could put them under some pressure and I thought we did that.
"The second half, maybe we just ran out of legs a little bit. It was our fourth game in five days, so the boys are pretty knackered. I think we just ran out of legs, chasing around."
Sportsbeat 2020