England’s women have been reacting to their European Championships performance in Russia, where they finished 22nd. Here’s what they have had to say:

Lois Peake

“I surprised myself. I thought I was going to get smashed but having no pressure was good because I could just play freely.

“The highlight was probably keeping my head against the girl (Tamara Pavcnik of Slovenia) when I was 10-6 up in the third and it went to the fifth but I managed to hold my head and win. I think last year I probably would have lost my head a bit.”

“I thought the team spirit was really good and we got on really well, but any weakness you have is really highlighted when you go away for England.”

Maria Tsaptsinos

“It was good from my perspective, I thought I played quite well the whole time and kept my head and focused on every match.

“As a team, I don’t think we did too badly. Obviously losing to Greece in the group wasn’t ideal but beating Belgium and Finland were good wins and when we played Slovenia after that we were very unlucky because a couple of five-setters could have gone either way and we just missed out on winning.

“We’ve got to keep practising because in a couple of months we could beat most of these players if we tried our socks off and carried on the way we are.

“Other than that, I think we did all right, especially from my perspective – my first senior international, I did better than I expected.”

Kelly Sibley

“I’m a little bit disappointed overall. To lose to Greece again 3-2 like we did last year is very disappointing but then I thought we bounced back quite well. The same day we had a very important match against Belgium where I thought we picked ourselves up and played very, very well.

“I’m personally very disappointed with the match against Slovenia to lose 3-1. I thought we had a great chance to take it through to finish in the top 20.

“So I’m a bit disappointed but I thought the team did well under the circumstances, really.”

Karina Le Fevre

“I think the team did really well bearing in mind it was a debut for both Maria and Lois and we picked up a good few wins.

“Against Toliou (Aikaterini Toliou of Greece – Le fevre lost in five sets), that would have been a good win for me but it just didn’t come off, I do think it could have been either way. That was probably my best performance.

“There were some positives to take from my matches but also disappointment at some parts of my game, but you learn a lot of things.

“I’ve got some things in mind that I want to take back to the training hall and work on for the next international and just take confidence with the younger team that we’ve got.”