Hannah Macleod revealed the secret to Great Britain women reaching their first Olympic hockey final as they are set to face the Netherlands.

Alex Danson scored twice and Helen Richarson-Walsh got one to gain their place in the gold medal match on Friday as they beat New Zealand 3-0.

The St Albans Hockey Club women’s head coach admitted to Cambridge News Britain are treating the tournament like a training block as Britain are guaranteed at least a silver.

“We train three weeks on and one week off at Bisham Abbey so three hard training weeks and then a down week and we just did that continuously,” said Macleod.

“I just can’t believe other teams are anywhere near us at this stage after seven games.

“For us, it’s like a Thursday of a last training week and we’re just going at it like that.

“You will see us celebrate and then it’s one more match.”

However, the 32-year-old, wanted to play down the pressure on their shoulders as the women will create history for their county.

She added: “We’ve tried to just go on the ‘this is just another match, this is just another match’.

“Otherwise if we look at his and go we’re all the way in Brazil and look how many Gb fans are there and we’ve got a silver medal for the first time in history. If you start going on that, it’s like oh this is scary stuff.

“But people are delivering so I think they are just thinking in the moment and it’s just 11 players running around after a little yellow ball.

"We lost to Argentina but I don't think we went into that believing we could win," said Macleod.

"I think that was the lesson we learned from four years ago. We put them on a pedestal and we ended up beating New Zealand for the bronze medal.

"Over the last three years we've beaten every team in the world so our mentality is it's another game.”

The gold medal match kicks off at 9pm BST.