I do get to do some pretty cool things for work. If I’m not collating bowls results or making a round of teas, then I’m rubbing shoulders with sporting celebrities at Whitstable Town FC or the East Kent Mavericks American football team.

So imagine my glee when the email dropped from Investec inviting me to join the GB hockey girls, including Canterbury’s own Susannah Townsend, plus Holcombe's Maddie Hinch, Sam Quek, Shona McCallin and Nic White, for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

First a handful of journalists and I enjoyed watching the girls go hell-for-leather in seven-a-side intra-squad games focused on applying and repelling pressure in the final third.

After two hours in the baking Buckinghamshire sunshine, the session finished and the girls strode over to join us.

The PR folk buzzed around, a pitch was prepared and teams were chosen for a ‘friendly’ match. Forget Australia v GB in Rio on August 6, this was the one that mattered most. Well, to those of us not going to Rio anyway.

After establishing the fact that I put the ‘Eat’ in Great Britain and there were no branded T-shirts that would fit me – even a large men’s gave the appearance I was wearing one of those heart-rate monitor bra things – I ended up in an orange bib which looked like it had been painted on.

‘Has anyone played hockey before?’ superstar striker Lily Owsley asked. Ummm, well, I dimly recall trying it at school but I also remember giving it up as soon as I was allowed to choose football or cricket or something I thought to be manlier.

I also attended an Easter hockey festival once – late in my teens if memory serves – but the only skills I showcased that weekend were drinking ones.

But I kept all that to myself and was soon preparing for the off, awkwardly clutching a fluorescent pink stick kindly leant to me by defender Laura Unsworth and surrounded by a mix of bronzed athletes and pasty office-based journos.

The game began and the GB girls switched the ball around between themselves with ease, almost daring us hacks to try and dispossess them.

Well I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, as Owsley soon found to her cost.

She dawdled in possession and I pounced on the merest glimmer of an opening, bundling the ball from under her spell amid a clatter of sticks and somehow finding myself bearing down on goal.

With the laughter and howls of derision of Owsley’s team-mates left way behind me, I stayed low and dribbled forward with all the grace of a peg-legged roadsweeper.

Eventually I steadied myself (well at least the bits that weren’t jiggling) and did something extremely unpatriotic... I scored the opening goal of the game.

I didn’t celebrate. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t like the thought I may have dented the confidence of my country’s finest so close to the Olympics.

So I just jogged back to my own half and then for the next 15 minutes proceeded to chase shadows – and get whacked on the knee on the goal-line.

I trudged off as a confirmed loser and with my lower back in several pieces, but hey, I’d had my moment in the sun. Now it’s time for the GB girls to seize theirs.

Investec, the specialist bank and asset manager, supports women’s hockey from grassroots to national level. investec.co.uk, @Investec_Sport