Distant relatives and hockey internationals Flora Peel and Frederick Bryan Peel.
Credits: Flora Peel courtesy of Team GB | Frederick Bryan Peel courtesy of the family.

Flora Peel, who played in midfield for the Great Britain (GB) women’s hockey squad at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, originally dreamed of winning an Olympic medal in skiing and was crowned British slalom champion at the age of eleven. However, after seeing her sister have a bad crash on the slopes, Flora switched to hockey and found that she much preferred being part of a team.

After playing international hockey at youth level, Flora made her senior England debut in February 2022 in the FIH Pro League, a championship for women’s national teams. She set up both goals when England beat Australia 2–1 to win Commonwealth Games hockey gold for the first time at Birmingham 2022. Flora made her first appearance for GB against Argentina in December 2022 and, having missed the previous year’s Women’s FIH Hockey World Cup due to injury, she was in the England team that placed fourth at the 2023 Women’s EuroHockey Championship. Her selection for the 16-player Olympic squad is her first opportunity to play for Team GB. She plays hockey at club level for Wimbledon Hockey Club.

Flora Peel in action during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Yves-du-Manoir Stadium.
Credit: Chloe Knott/Team GB.

It appears that Flora’s inheritance of hockey skill may have come, not only from her mother who plays hockey, but also down the paternal line from a relative of her father’s. A distant cousin of hers, Rob Peel, has been in touch to let us, and her, know that his grandfather, Frederick Bryan Peel (known as Bryan), played hockey for England for five years at the beginning of the 20th century. Bryan’s great grandparents are Flora’s five-times great grandparents.

The England men’s team that played Ireland in 1904. Bryan Peel is seated second from the right.
Photograph courtesy of Rob Peel.

According to a glowing contemporary tribute to him in a regional newspaper, Bryan made 37 representative appearances for Cheshire County, 19 for the North and 10 for England. “As an outside right he was without an equal in this country in his day”. Their sports correspondent also thought that, when he was playing, “Anyone who had the misfortune to be opposing left half-back would be assured of an exciting, if not pleasant, afternoon”. For many years, Bryan was also “a distinctly useful cricketer”.

The North men’s team that played the South in regional representative hockey in 1905. Bryan Peel is standing second from the right, back row. Bryan’s brother Lionel is seated centrally. Both men were in the cotton trade.
Photograph courtesy of Rob Peel.

Flora and Bryan also share an illustrious but non-hockey-playing (as far as the record shows) ancestor: Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for two periods in the 19th century. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service while Home Secretary; the officers of this pioneering force consequently gained the nicknames of ‘bobbies’ and, less fondly, ‘peelers’. Peel’s other claim to fame is that his image is featured on the cover of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Flora’s pathway to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games has undoubtedly benefited from her being one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme. This allows them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support. It is a world away from the international hockey experiences of Bryan who lived and played in the ‘amateur era’ when athletes had no cause to specialise, often participating and excelling in multiple sports but as a pastime rather than as a profession.