by Alex Hoad at the Basketball Arena

Steve Brown says GB’s tactics worked ‘a dream’ against France, helping them to a 57-50 win on Thursday night and keeping alive their chance of reaching the semi-finals.

Playing infront of around 10,000 fans in the Baketball Arena – including PM David Cameron, Princess Anne and Sir Clive Woodward – GB were involved in a tense battle through three quarters with their rivals before pulling away late on.

The teams were tied at the end of the first two quarters and GB led by one at the end of the third, but after the restart they utilised their twin jet engines of David Anthony and Aaron Phipps to good effect, roaring past the tiring French B52 bombers and setting up a winner-takes-all clash with Japan at 3pm on Friday afternoon.

Brown said: “Most games are rated on the final score... and we won.

“France is always a long, hard slog. They are a team that needs to be worn down. As you saw there, it was goal for goal for an awfully long time, but the tactical decisions we made all worked.

“We’re very lucky to have such a deep squad with so many different attributes.

“We know what (France’s) strengths are and what their abilities are. We held them for a long time and played them man to man, wearing them down and then brought on players like Anthony and Phipps on who have got all that pace at the end... well it went like a dream, we sorted it all out.”

Brown played more minutes than anyone in the opening game defeat to World No1 USA, however he spend more time off court today to make room for the pace attack.

He said: “I love letting my teammates go on court. I love doing my bit and then letting somebody else do theirs. It all worked out exactly as we wanted. We won, there’s nothing more to it.”

The 31-year-old also admitted he was thrilled to have bounced back from the loss to the USA so quickly.

He said: “It’s always very difficult when you have days like yesterday when you put out your best performance and it’s still not good enough.”

Brown again praised the GB crowd’s impact on the game, in particular a group who had travelled up from his home town of Sittingbourne to cheer him on.

He said: “We were playing for the support. It’s fantastic to have that local support travelling all the way up here... it’s humbling.”

Japan also overcame France in their opening game and the winner of the clash will qualify for the last four.

Brown said: “These are the top eight teams in the world. You can’t take anything for granted.

“But we’ve got tricks up our sleeve to play them, we’ve got different line-ups, you’ll see different combinations of players, different ideas of presses and tactics.

“I’m looking forward to it.”