Kaz proud despite Scots being held by Canada in Gold Coast

Kaz Cuthbert is captaining the Scotland hockey team at the Commonwealth Games (pic by JSHPIX.CO)

Scotland captain Kaz and her team-mates were unable to find a way through the Canadian defence as they battled to bounce back from their 6-1 loss to New Zealand in their opening match.

A late surge the Scots - whose squad also includes Kaz's Wildcats team-mate Becky Ward - wasn't enough for them to claim their first win of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Amy Brodie had a late goal disallowed as Scotland battled hard for the victory but it ended in a goalless draw.

However Kaz said afterwards: "It was a great game to be part of; end-to-end and exciting.

"We had all the better pressure in the match, a few more decisions could maybe have went with us, but I think we deserved to win that game. We come away proud of the performance but pretty gutted about the result.

“Yesterday we played world-class opponents in New Zealand, and they’re vying to win this tournament, today we went out there against Canada to win. We definitely matched them but we just have to get that win now.

"Our defence was brilliant, we controlled the ball, built up the play and had good outcomes, so we’ll just keep working on that and put the ball in the back of the net.

“Ghana is our next game so we’ll prep for Ghana, again it’s a game we’re going out there to win, so we’ll make sure we play our game and get the win.

"Against Australia it’s all to play for and we’ll see what we can do. If we do the job against Ghana and Australia then we’re in the semis.”

Meanwhile there was disappointment for Rob Harwood - the third of the Wildcats trio at the Games - as the men's side went down 1-0 to Canada.

The Scots were looking to follow up their win over South Africa, in which Rob scored the opening goal in a 4-2 success.

But it was the Canadians who got the only goal in the first quarter of a close encounter when a penalty corner routine was finished off by a deflection by Matt Sarmento.

The Scots now have a tough task to qualify from their pool with matches to come against hosts Australia on Sunday and New Zealand on Tuesday.