Val Robinson obituary

Val Robinson, who has died aged 80, was one of Britain’s best hockey players, appearing 149 times for England and 21 times for Great Britain over more than two decades from 1963 to 1984.

During that period she was better known than anyone else in her sport – male or female – and added to her fame when she twice won the BBC’s Superstars competition, in 1979 and 1981, by roundly defeating strong fields of much younger elite athletes.

Fairly small at 5ft 5in and weighing 9st, but supremely fit and tough, Robinson was a midfielder with attacking intent whose main aim was to serve up scoring opportunities for her teammates by dribbling through the opposition.

Devastatingly quick, with a trademark body swerve and the ability to keep the ball glued to her stick even on bumpy surfaces, she played with her head up, on the lookout for the killer pass or an opening that would allow her to essay a mazy run.

For much of her career the England women’s hockey team had an annual televised fixture at Wembley Stadium, often attended by 60,000 or more fans, many of them schoolgirls on what the Guardian’s hockey correspondent, Nancy Tomkins, characterised as “a combination of pilgrimage and jamboree”. Each year for two decades Robinson was their idol, heralded by a crescendo of screams every time she set off on one of her marauding adventures.

The first woman to play 100 times for England, her final tally of appearances was a record at the time, and given that she played in an era when internationals were much less frequent, is probably equivalent to, or maybe even better, than the 375 England capsattained more recently by Kate Richardson-Walsh.

Robinson’s participation in Superstars – which attracted millions of viewers in its heyday – did