RHIAN'S SOCCER JOURNALS: 

Since all the disappointments of the Norway Cup Final, I have traveled back to North America and have been in the National Women's training camp since 8th November. It is great to be back with the squad.

My travel day from Oslo to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, was a very long one. The late night following the Norway Cup Final didn't help either. We had to be at the Oslo airport for 9:00 in the morning. Then, D and I had a very interesting time getting booked in on our flight as we could not convince the American Immigration agent that we were meant to be in Norway. After 20 minutes of haggling and arguing, she finally allowed us to head on through security, but she insisted that I had to go through on my British passport. I tried to tell her that I would prefer to go into the US with my Canadian documents, but she was having none of it.

The flight to Newark went well. It was hard to sleep, but there were some great movies available and I dozed through these. Once in Newark we had to face American security again. Shock of all shocks, I was detained for extra screening because I have two passports and I had presented my British passport, just as I had been told to do. I am still angry at the lady in Oslo and I hope she is still on duty when I return there on 15th. November. She and I need to have words.

After a protracted session of form-filling (including one in Spanish as they had run out of English ones), I was unleashed on the USA. D and I had a long wait until we boarded and headed off to Florida. One of our bags was lost of course, but by this point I was so tired that I didn't care very much. I just wanted to get to the hotel and hop into bed.

I have now been in camp for two full days and I am enjoying getting back into training with the squad. On the first day, 9th November, we had one training session with the team and then one in the afternoon with the coaches. The rest of the team had the afternoon off.

D and I only trained lightly in the morning because of our flights, jet lag, injury and fatigue from the Norway Cup Final. Then we joined in a more intense session in the afternoon with our trainer Mario. Training is not always enjoyable, but I really like the paces Mario puts us through. There is plenty of movement work with soccer balls always being incorporated. 

Yesterday we had a game lined up against the University of Miami. The morning was off in terms of training. Instead, we replicated what a game morning would be like. We walked and stretched in the morning ... etc.

The game went quite well, but it was more about settling in as a team than the score. I think the final tally was 4-0, but it might have been only 3-0. I didn't play to give my sprained and bruised ankle a little bit more rest. This meant that I could really study the game.

The first half was a little frenzied and frazzled. As a squad, we have not been in camp for a while and this was soon obvious when we first stepped out onto the field. Even though we were always a much stronger and better team, as you would expect, than the University women, we did allow them into the game at times by putting ourselves into bad situations with the ball. Things eventually calmed down though and the team started to look a little better.

In the second half, many of our new young guns were let loose on the field and I thought they did a great job. Even though there were still a number of frantic moments, most of the time they played really well and completely dictated and dominated the game. It was good to see.

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