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Prospectso i thought it would be best for me to check back in with you all and give you all a slight insight as to what i have been up to since i left Boston at the end of our WPS season. Nothing much really just playing in a ..................EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS FINAL,ha.
so here goes i will take you all back to the begining and tell you all how things went down in our camp.
we all meet up at the airport on the Monday morning all suited and booted in our LOVELY!!!! looking suits, this is the 1st time we have seen each other in our suits so all the banter begins and all the 1 liner jokes are dropped. we know this is the begining of our journey and the wait is finally over and we are now off to the Euros in Finland.
i will skip the parts about the plane ride because i think by now you all know how much i hate flying, so i will leave you with - it was not the best of plane journeys and when you have Fara Williams beside you on a plane who is a worse flyer than myself, then you can double the amounts of screaming that you would normally hear.
ok so a week to go till our 1st match against Italy - all i can really remember about this week was........ IT WAS A LONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG week!
we had a whole week of hearing nothing else apart from the italians, so when people (by people i mean media and other teams) said after the game that we took italy to lightly i would have like to grab these people by the hand and been able to time travel and for them to spend the week leading up to the game in our shoes! i can tell you that going into the game i think to this day i can tell you everything there is to know about every single italian player there is to no. Panico target player main goal threat very dangoures in and around the box, Gabbiadini #8 tricky player likes to dribble 1v1, gama #3 left back but is prodominatley rightfooted, both full backs like to get forward so attack these areas quick etc etc etc etc, i think i can tell you what time they were going to bed also,ha, my point being here is that we had a whole long week to the build up to this game and probably had information overload, but no was expeacting us to be a player down in the 1st 15min and that is what we had to deal with.
my reflections on this game - did we play our best football no, we played to many long balls which is not our style at all. At times you could not tell we was a player down, we was still going flat out because we thought we could win, in the end it took a wonder gaol by their #8 (who we had picked out as a possible danger from scouting reports ) to win the game for them ENGLAND 1 ITALY2.
In any competition it is always important to get of to a winning start, but we knew it was not the end and it was all still to play for, so it was important to get sprits and banter back high in camp, so LAURA BASSETT SUE SMITH and EMILY WESTWOOD made up a quiz for players and all coaching staff to take part in - the quiz was called roomy and roomys! so my room mate being karen carney it was our turn to take the chairs, basically there was a divde with a chair on each side, you had to bits of paper with one name on it being Alex and the other being Karen, you got asked 3 questions and me and kaz had to try and match our answers. our three questions was as follows 1) who wears the GOLD PUMA boots the best (me and kaz both had the same boots for the euros but i ended up sticking with my fav colour red ones) kaz put up her answer (ALEX) i put up mine (KAZ), we was both too nice,ha. 2) whos sending off in the WPS was better (everyone found this question very funny) kaz put her answer up (KAZ) my answer (KAZ),ha - yes we had 1 point and we was up and running. last question - who playes for the best club in the WPS - kaz's answer (ALEX) - yes all you chicago red star's fans karen carney your player said that Alex scott's Boston breakers is a better team then chicago, what cha think about that then,LOL. all breakers fans you should have no doubt that my anwer was (ALEX).
at least we progressed to the next round of the quiz, but then we did not get no further than that.
we had two days recovery and had to get to grips with how the russians play and there strengths and there weakness, one of there main players were their left sided midfielder so i knew that my job would be to keep her quite. one slight problem i had however was when we trained the night before in the stadium i tweeked my groin but i thought it was not a big deal i would be fine - now to the game, i think we all know how this one panned out - 2 0 down in the 1st 15 minutes of the game, WOW what was happening to this england side that so many people said would go far in this tournament??? i know this is easy to say (write) but really truly deeply, even though we was 2 0 down i and the rest of the girls always knew we could still win the game, we just needed to kick our arse into gear and start playing football, and thats just what we did. and none other then the one kelly smith scoring the game winning goal, this goal was just your average everyday goal by kelly - Messing, oh my goodness, she collected the ball on the half way line rips off a shot and sends it over the goal keppers head, what a way to win a game and get our Euros 09 of to a start! ENGLAND 3 RUSSIA 2
so it was back to the hotel to spend time with family and friends and to get an early night and try and get the recovery process underway!!!
Last group game v sweden. Going into this game there was over 20 possibilities how we could qualify for the quarter finals or how we could be eliminated so there was nothing for us to think about apart from going into the sweden game and winning. oh and there was one more thing for me to think about also, the tweeked grion that i did have against russia was now a tear, so there was no training for me, just lots and lots of treatment and a race againist time to try and make it a little better so i could play???
well i run out of time and the grion was very bad, the medical team decided that they would give me 2 injections in the groin area that would hopefully get me through the game. i knew i was up against a good player and was hoping i would be able to do a sort of job on her. i had my injection and was ready to go or so i thought!!! what the medical team did know was that my body would not react too well to these injections and send my whole leg numb ( my kicking legs of all legs too)OH NO!! so basically i played against none over then a top sweedish team in a european chapmionship with torn fibers in my grion and now a numb leg that feels like a dead weight to top it off. well i managed to hobble around for 90mins and we got a draw that meant we now qualified for the european championship quater final...............OBECTIVE 1 COMPLETE!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
i did a press confrence the day before the sweden game and it seemed like EVERYONE had already written us off and said we would not qualify, a question i got asked was....the sweeden manager says that he is disapointed with the England team and we are not playing the football he had thought we would, what is my response to this......... i smiled and said well its not how you start but it is how you finish and come tomorrow night we will do everything we can to still be in this tornement and not be finshed just yet.
ENGLAND 1 SWEDEN 1
(you can see i have blue tape from my knee all the way to my groin to try and help the healing process)
Now i can definatly say.... ITS NOT HOW YOU START BUT IT IS HOW YOU FINISH !!!!!!
there was still alot more to come from an england team that seemed like everyone had written off,hahaha
so thats it for now, as you all know the story did not end just yet for your english Boston Breaker but i do not want to have you all reading till midnight so i am going to break this up into two parts and hope you all come back.
ok miss you all, i miss Boston but i'll be back( oh my gosh how cheesy)
p.s, i seem to be having trouble uploading pictures onto this blog, it has got to the point were i am on my 6th attempt and now i finally give up, so sorry and heres hoping it works next time x
Oh and I think it's awesome that you're still blogging during the off-season. Your posts are always hilarious, keep 'em coming!
kat_keeper08:17 PM EST