Kick-off will save me from trash TV

13 April 2012

The last five days have been spent at our base camp Awaji Island in Japan. Training has intensified as we get closer to Sunday's kick-off against Sweden, but you only need to train for about an hour and a half at this stage of the season. As you will appreciate, this leaves the lads with a lot of spare time.

In my experience, one of the most important factors about coping with a major tournament is dealing with the hours of free time you get. The week before the tournament, in particular, is a grind.

You have to try to avoid being cooped up in your room for hours, and try to keep your mind and body active.

Although you need to rest, it's important not to lie around and get lethargic.

The Football Association has done everything possible to lay on things in the hotel for the boys to do. Once again, we have an arcade with video games and a pool table. There is table tennis, table football and even a dart board!

We have a vast selection of books and DVDs to borrow, and of course we all have access to the internet from our rooms.

This has proved to be invaluable, particularly given the time difference and distance from the UK. With the English newspapers being two or three days old by the time they arrive here, the internet has been a great way of keeping up with the news.

We do have ITV and BBC1 in the hotel now, which helps with the news. Unfortunately, the time difference limits us a bit to what we get to watch. When we wake up it is the middle of the night back home so we get the thin end of the programming schedule.

Our afternoon viewing is the awful morning chat shows, and when we go to our room at night it is Children's ITV! All the best programmes are on when we are asleep!

E-mail has proved to be invaluable as well. Because of the time difference, there are only limited hours during the day that you can talk to people back in England.

If we train or eat at those times, obviously that limits us further, so a lot of the guys have been communicating by e-mail. Once the tournament kicks off we will be watching a couple of matches a day and of course travelling to our games, so the time will then pass quite quickly.

As Sunday's game with Sweden approaches it has started to get noticeably more humid at training. A constant check has been kept on our weight, before and after training, to ensure we are drinking enough fluids.

Even at training, where you can constantly replace fluids, I lost close to a kilo in one day.

Put this into a match situation, where it is very difficult to get drinks onto the field, and the boys will lose at least double that.

I'm sure a lot of people would love to lose half a stone in an hour and a half, but it's not ideal when you're trying to win a game of football.

The fact that our games against Sweden and Argentina kick off in the evening will be a big help in this respect. Only our final Group F match against Nigeria starts in the afternoon.

Every team will go into their opening fixture full of hope. A lot of the teams will approach their opener desperate not to be beaten. Lose your first game and qualifying for the second stage is very hard.

We have to be positive though. A win in your first game leaves you very strong in your group and also gives you tremendous confidence.

We are facing a team that we must respect. Sweden have some talented players and are a very solid, well-organised unit. Watching their friendly against Japan last week, which ended in a 1-1 draw, showed those qualities again.

Our record against them is poor - England haven't had a win against Sweden since 1968 - but we have to believe that we can beat them with the quality in our squad.

Most opening matches are tight affairs and I would agree with comments I have heard this week that one goal will probably decide the outcome.

Dealing with the conditions will be a big factor in progressing through the tournament, and we know that Sweden will be very well prepared for these finals.

We are looking forward to the challenge ahead of us, and will be giving everything to try to get that perfect start.

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