Sharkey's royal variety show not enough (From Bucks Free Press)

Team GB miss out on goalball semi-finals

10:40am Friday 7th September 2012 in Sport By Alan Feldberg

ANNA Sharkey finished as top-scorer for the Great Britain goalball team with seven goals – including a hat-trick in front of Prince Harry – but it wasn’t enough to give them a shot at the medal.

The Wycombe 24-year-old scored a hat-trick in front of Prince Harry in a 5-0 win over Denmark that earned their place in the last eight.

But although she scored again to put Great Britain 1-0 up in the quarter-final with Sweden on Wednesday, the Swedes rallied to win 2-1 in added time.

She said: “Our ideal was to finish off the match in normal time because no one likes the pressure of golden goal.

“Now we’ve got to pick ourselves up because there are a lot of good things about the way we’ve played. We only knew we’d be here in March so to make the quarter-finals and finish second in our group is a very big achievement.

“Of course, I’m sad the tournament is over but we have shown we are a talented team. GB are now on the international stage.”

Meanwhile, Sharkey’s brother Michael was in the men’s goalball team that failed to get out of their group.