Rehanne Skinner had a busy international window even though there was no club football in the Women’s Super League.
She had a record number of call-ups from her West Ham United squad, including Australia’s Katrina Gorry and Wales’s Ffion Morgan – meaning there were a lot of players and matches to keep track of.
“Some games are harder to get a hold of than others!” she told SheKicks.net in her press conference on Thursday morning. “In some instances, it’s the day after [the match] when they’ve been uploaded to one of the platforms that we use to get access to the games.
“It‘s difficult to track, and we share the load a little bit amongst the technical staff. It’s obviously really important for us to get across what the players are doing.
“I don’t talk to the players too much when they’re on international camp because I think it’s important when they’re there they get to focus on what they’re doing, unless they need something from us, but after they’ve played the game, it’s good to just be able to chat through the positives that they’ve had within the game and looking forward to the next one.
“It’s good to keep on top of, but that in itself can be quite time-consuming – enjoyable but time consuming!”
Rehanne Skinner: We want to be hard to beat
West Ham have had a tough start to the season, having lost all six of their games in the league thus far, and it gets no easier this weekend as they travel to face second-placed Manchester City.
However, the Hammers can take a boost from the 1-1 draw they secured against the same opponents in March.
“We worked really hard to get a point out of them last time at home and there was parts of that game where we felt like we could have had more, actually, which obviously provides confidence to the team that, when we’re functioning at our best, we’re definitely in a position to compete with those teams and make life hard for them,” added Skinner.
“There’s some changes to the set-up under the new manager (Andree Jeglertz) and I think that’s going to be a test for us, a little bit different in terms of the style of play. So it’s going to be a couple of different options there for them, I think, in that.
“Away from home, we want to make sure that we step up to that and we make ourselves as hard to beat as possible, regardless of what they’re doing. We want to give a good account of ourselves, stay in the game and when we get the opportunities, which we will get, we just want to be really comfortable and confident in front of goal and make life as hard as we can for them.”
