GK Lizzie Durack, chronicles the squad’s first two days in Canada and they were biggies: ‘Our Big First Days in Canada’…
It’s been a fairly hectic first two days here in our preparation camp in Toronto, so I haven’t managed to do a blog in a couple of days, so I’m going to try and squish two days into this one blog.
Our main focus for these first few days was to get over the jet lag, to acclimatise to the hot and humid Canadian weather, to continue building a strong team environment and to develop our tactical strategies further.
Sunday was a typical day in our England camp. We trained in the morning at the Toronto FC training facilities. Some of you may already know this, but all of our games will be played on synthetic turf, so while we are preparing for our games, we will be doing all our training sessions on synthetic pitches. It was a hot and humid training session, but as we had just got off the plane it was a light intensity session, which meant HEAD TENNIS TIME!!!
I love playing head tennis, as I’m sure many of you football fanatics out there do, but I’m especially excited to report on this particular head tennis competition because my team, consisting of me, Andy Johnston (our GK coach) and Nikita Parris, were champions!! People often underestimate the goalkeepers when it comes to head tennis but we flourished under the scrutiny and came through undefeated.
After head tennis we moved into some set play strategies and then after cooling down we headed home to get in the pool for recovery. As I said in an earlier blog, we weigh ourselves before and after training sessions to work out how much water we lose. For anyone interested, in Sunday’s session I lost 1.1kg of water – from just over an hour of training – which is pretty crazy really!
In the afternoon we had a ‘team values’ meeting where we came together to discuss the sort of team we want to be. A few of the words we settled on were things like Passion, Family, Trust and Hunger. This meeting was also the introduction of our team mascot, Lola the Lion, who will be featured throughout this World Cup as an important member of the England U20s.
The rest of the evening was spent in the Players Room playing card games and darts but before long the day was over and it was time to get back into our lovely, big, queen-size beds!
Monday brought a very different set of stories to share. As you might be aware, from all of our excitement over social media, we visited Niagara Falls. But before we could go and enjoy the team afternoon out, we were up early and on the training pitch by 8am, to get our training session in for the day. The weather was a bit of a change from Sunday’s heat, as it bucketed down with rain for most of the session!
Back at the hotel we quickly showered and dried off before jumping back on the bus and heading towards Niagara! The team atmosphere was great as we rocketed down the highway singing our lungs out to the tunes being played (the team rendition of ‘Listen’ by Beyonce, was a particular favourite of mine).
After about an hour and a half on the bus we arrived at our destination and we were all pretty awe-struck by the beautiful scenes that confronted us. Pictures do more than words in these sorts of situations so I’ve included a few here of our adventures on the boat and walking around the Falls.
Most of the afternoon was spent in this amazingly beautiful area, but on the way home an outlet shopping centre was spotted and there was no way we weren’t going to stop there. Now if any of you think we are a fast and athletic on a football pitch, your minds would be blown by the speed and efficiency of our team when there is a Nike outlet store in sight and we’ve only been given half an hour before we have to be back on the bus!! All I’ll say is that Nike did a good day of business yesterday!
By the time we got home it was pretty much time for dinner and then soon after, everyone was winding down for bed. However, just after dinner we had a short meeting with Mo [Marley, England U20s Head Coach], who reminded us of the important job we have ahead of us and that although it’s good to have fun along the way, we are here for a greater purpose.
That’s it for the last couple of days, I hope you guys are enjoying the blog and are spreading the word about our team and the World Cup!
Yours in football,
The England U20s Women’s Football Team
@LizzieDfootball
SHE KICKS – the online community for women’s football
