England players get to grips with life down under

Having left for Australia last Thursday, the England team arrived in Paramatta, Sydney, on Saturday evening and on arrival took a walk around the local area to begin getting to grips with their acclimatisation programme.

The next day the team were straight into training with a pool session. Pool sessions have been incorporated into their tour as players use all of their muscle groups as well as benefiting from the compression of the water.

Not all of the squad like pool sessions, which will feature everyday of the tour; so England Team Strength and Conditioning Coach Chris Mcleod organised games to keep players in the water and moving. In typical sporting fashion the players soon became hyper competitive and time ran away with them as the desire to win took hold. England Team Manager Liz Bloor commented; “The locals think we are mad using the outdoor pool in the winter but with temperatures reaching around 20 degress in the sun shine it’s like summer for us”.

A yoga session with England Team Physio Emma Batchelor was next on the agenda. Yoga enables players to stretch out muscles and Vice-captain Pamela Cookey is a huge fan. Karen Atkinson, England Team Captain said; “Being one of the oldies I like all the variety of the sessions as I need to look after my body so I don’t pick up injuries.”

Last activity for the day was a court session which had no impact so an outdoor court was used. The added benefit was some sunshine which helps the player’s body-clocks adjust to the right time zone. The session had lots of balance and proprioception exercises, combined with ball handling skills using netballs, golf balls and tennis balls aimed at testing players’ reactions.

Eboni Beckford-Chambers commented on the tour so far; “It’s been a productive first few days getting my balance back and losing the ‘topsy-turvy’ feeling from the flight. I really felt the difference on the wobble boards from day 1 to day 3.”

Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to training sessions which got progressively tougher with lots of focus on balance and getting the squad tuned and ready to perform at full pace ahead of the game against the ANZ team the New South Wales Swifts. Stacey Francis commented; “It’s been good progressing things day by day, I usually like to go hard out all the time but don’t think that would have been such a good idea. I now can’t wait to play the match this afternoon.”

The first game of the tour will be played tonight against the Swifts and it will be played over 6 quarters. England player Sonia Mkoloma, who is currently playing for the Swifts in the ANZ, will play with her club side for the first half then play the second with England.

http://www.englandnetball.co.uk/news/Current_News.php?articleId=1044

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