Having lost to Montenegro 34-18 earlier this week, the British team put up a brave fight at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre, trailing 10-14 at half time, with captain Lynn McCafferty netting three times, as the home side matched their opponents and came close to springing a shock.

Despite defeat, McCafferty said that the squad were pleased with their performance.

"After Montenegro we worked on several areas of our game to identify what we could do better," she said.

"We worked on our defence and some of the little mistakes we made, and I think we've shown today that we managed to fix things.

"We wanted to play longer in attack and be more composed and more in control and we did that.

"We stuck to our game plan and played our own game for 60 minutes in both defence and attack.

"They had some players who could score from ten metres which you can't really stop, but if they got closer than that we worked very hard to make it difficult for them to score.

"We can take so many positives away from the game and feel good that we're learning so much from this week."

Their next game in qualifying rounds will be against Poland in March, and they will go into next month's Olympic test event heartened after this performance.

There they will face Austria, Angola, China, Poland and Slovakia at the Handball Arena in the London Olympic Park.

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