Wales was our first match since beating Croatia and losing narrowly to Iceland in our first two World Cup Qualifiers last October. All of the players were excited about getting to play together again with the next set of World Cup Qualifiers being in late March.

The squad met up at 11am on the morning of the game (Wednesday 24^th February) for a light training session before the match. Training lasted just over an hour and the girls were buzzing for the game. After training, we travelled to a local hotel for our pre-match meal and to prepare for the game. Upon arriving at the hotel we met up with Helen, one of our players who couldn’t make training due to work commitments. As the weather had been bad leading up to the game, with quite a lot of rain and snow Helen, like a few other players, had bought a pair of studded boots. Helen didn’t take long to inform us all of her difficulty in trying to find a pair of studded boots in her shoe size. She then proceeded to open the shoe box and we were all nearly blinded!! She had bought the Electric Green/Red/Black Nike T90 Laser III (pictured above) – what a colour combination?! After endless amounts of laughing at Helen’s boots, we got on with the pre-match meal and team talk before leaving for The Oval.

(Left, Julie Nelson in action. Photo: Stephen Hamilton)

The warm-up went well and everyone was pumped up and ready to play! The match got off to a slow start with Wales having the upperhand in the first half. In the second half, after dusting off a few of the cobwebs we started to play better as a team and were creating a few chances. The result could have gone either way with both teams creating a number of chances, however, both teams failed to capitalise.

The pitch held up well with all the weather, thanks to the hard work of the groundsman and the match finished 0-0, with both teams making full use of all of the squad members. We were disappointed with our first half performance but were happier with how we had played in the second half. It was good to get all the girls together again, as it is often difficult, due to the fact that quite a few of the senior squad are based outside Northern Ireland.

Our next World Cup Qualifiers are back-to-back fixtures against France. We travel to France of 24^th March for the away fixture on 27^th March before returning home for the home fixture on 31^st March. These are two massive fixtures for us, as France are one of the top teams in Europe and the World, being ranked 9^th in the FIFA World Rankings!

(Right, Danielle McDowell. Photo: Stephen Hamilton)

France had 10,000 people watch their 12-0 defeat of Estonia in their last home World Cup Qualifier. The biggest crowd most of the players in our squad have played against is around 4,000 when we played Spain away in our European Qualifiers, so the girls are both nervous and excited about the prospect of playing in front of such a big crowd as it will be a new experience for quite a few of the younger players.

The girls have been training intensely in preparation for the games, with weekly training sessions and strength and conditioning sessions, along with individual work and club pre-season training. We all know these games will present us with a big challenge but we’re all up for it and are excited about these fixtures, as it’s always good to challenge yourself by playing against the top teams.