Great Britain men lost out to a solitary goal seven minutes from time against 2004 silver medallists, the Netherlands, in a hard-working performance which saw chances at either end. 

Inverleith’s Stephen Dick and goalkeeper Ali McGregor were the two Scots who started for GB.

The Dutch had the first opportunity to score in the 9th minute, but keeper McGregor continued the fine form he showed against Pakistan on Monday to deny Matthijs Brouwer with his feet.

Denied of any first-half penalty corners, the Dutch scored the winning goal one minute into the second-half, through Taeke Taekema. 

Four minutes from time, Taekema was again thwarted by McGregor from another penalty corner to keep the score to 1-0, but they had already done enough to take all three points. 

The result sees Great Britain retain an outside chance of qualifying for the semi-finals – but it will mean having to beat South Africa and Canada as well as table-toppers Australia, the world’s no.1 side, who have amassed 16 goals in two games so far. 

However, Team GB remain on course to finish higher than their world ranking of 8th which was the target set for the side before the start of the tournament.

Head Coach Jason Lee was proud of his team’s work rate against the World No. 3 side and said after the game “Holland are the best team in the world and we are not.  However, we are trying to push to that kind of standard and this game reflected that.   We are trying to play on quality and hard work I am proud of how we played.  We have made some good strides in the last two years.

 “We want to try and improve our performance, but I don’t think we’re far off our best based on today’s game.” 

Former Scotland player Lawrence Docherty also started for Holland.  Docherty left the UK and became naturalised in the Netherlands.