STAUNTON: I REVEL IN MY LIONS PRIDE
PLAYING for England is a very proud moment – the first time in a long time I’ve felt some extra nerves walking onto a pitch.
It just adds another thought into your mind before you play but the experience is fantastic and you learn so much from it.
It’s good to be back with everyone for a third time – all the staff, the lads who were here last time and the new faces. The set-up is so professional and it’s a pleasure to be a part of.
Myself and Fejiri Okenabirhie are probably two of the most experienced England C players here in Ireland, so you want to help the new lads fit in – it’s quite daunting the first time. It can be intimidating coming in at first, but everyone makes it easy.
It’s strange. You go from wanting to get one-up on each other every week of the season to playing alongside each other. It’s a different experience and everyone gets along when we’re here.
We all have a mutual respect. We’re all decent footballers – otherwise we wouldn’t be here – and we all know where we want to go in the game. So there’s a bond there straightaway as we try to help each other with what we all want to achieve.
It’s nice to mix with other players and see how different they are, how different training can be and different characters in the group.
This shows the magic of international football. There’s boys here I’ve never met before and by Sunday we’ll be saying goodbye as if we’ve been playing together all season.
It’s a proud moment to pull on the England shirt and represent your country. We all want each other to do well so you have to buy into that. We’re all here for each other and if the team does well it reflects well on everyone.
When you first come away with England, you assume it’s going to be all football. But a lot of what Paul Fairclough and the staff do is about building yourself off the pitch and getting to know the group. That’s important – when you’re together for such a short time, you need to understand each other a bit more rather than it just be taking to the pitch with some blokes in an England kit.
Paul is really reflective on the games so it adds another dimension to how you see it. I take things from other people’s games and try to implement them in my own. Hopefully we can get a good result like we did in Wales. It wasn’t a complete performance by any means, but overall we did well and we’ll be looking to do the same again.