Olympic gold goalie Hinch laughs off Manchester City link saying she's '˜useless' at football

Maddie Hinch GB Womens Hockey Gold Medal winner (Photo by Jon Rigby) SUS-160827-092902008

The West Chiltington-based stopper helped Team GB’s women to their first-ever gold medal at Rio earlier this month.

Her heroics between the stick kept the Netherlands from scoring in the shoot-out as GB clinched a 2-0 final victory on penalties.

Hinch’s performance shot her to stardom on social media and saw plenty of jokes about her becoming out-of-favour Joe Hart’s replacement in Manchester.

The 27-year-old has said she isn’t much cop with the bigger goals and balls, but is up for a rumoured shoot-out with reigning Premier League champions Leicester City in an attempt to keep out Jamie Vardy.

Hinch said: “My Twitter went mad saying Pep should sign Maddie, so there have been a lot of jokes about that, but I am useless in a football goal. Have you seen the size of me?

“I am not very big and it’s a very different story. I like to chase people and run around rather than stand there!

“We will see if any football things pop up, but I would be useless.

“Someone said Gary Lineker had posted something (on Twitter), so I thought I would reply back and he replied again. It was strange, but it just shows some of the big names that were watching - it’ so cool.

“Apparently Leicester City have shown an interest in some of their boys taking some penalties against me, but again, I won’t save many. It would be cool to do something like that, though.

“There is a lot of cross over in sport and it would be cool to chat to some football goalies about how they approach things.

“I do think a lot of goalkeeping is in your head. I wrote on my bottle ‘stay big’ and that for me is a huge thing I grab onto. I am not a big person, but have to carry myself and act that way, if you feel big, suddenly you have a swagger around the D.

“You want your teammates to look at you like that and the opposition to think you are unbeatable. The psychology side of it is huge.”

Read more from our interview with Hinch in Thursday’s West Sussex County Times.