Sadia Kabeya's Six Nations Column | Ireland Week
Getting off the coach at Twickenham to a sea of fans cheering you on is a feeling like no other
We flew back home in the evening after the Scotland game and got back to Pennyhill at around 11pm, so a lot of our post-game recovery came the next day. We were encouraged to prioritise our rest and recovery, so we were given the option to go down to the pool, use the steam room and get the body moving. We also have a few recovery pumps in the hotel which pump air through sleeves that you put on your leg to promote blood flow.
We were also told to actually rest our bodies and not do anything physical, which is something I took very literally. I spent most of my day sleeping, (something I’m great at) before ordering some food with Lucy Packer and chilling for the rest of the evening.
INTENSE ENVIRONMENT
The first couple of weeks in camp take some adjusting to. We’re a few weeks into the campaign now so our bodies are getting used to the level of intensity and the turnaround between games, but it just highlights how important recovery is. It’s also about being able to switch off from rugby. It’s as much about physical rest as it is mental rest, because international camp is such a high-intensity environment and you need to give yourself a break so that you can go into a Test week with a clear head.
One of the biggest leaps from club rugby to international rugby that I feel when I come into camp is the contact time (How much we get done in a day) and not having access to our home comforts. When you’re training with your club you are able to go home and have time to yourself, but our longest stints in Red Roses camp can be up two weeks without going home so you just have to get used to being in your bubble and living without the home comforts that you’re so used to.
In terms of training, it’s also a step up from club rugby. We’re training at an intensity which is higher than a match intensity so that when the game comes round we are ready and in a good place fitness-wise. The biggest leap though is getting used to the new schedule and fitting a lot more into our days.
THE TWICKENHAM EXPERIENCE
I was lucky enough to play in the game against France at Twickenham last year, and of the things I enjoyed the most about the experience was the coach journey to the stadium. Going past Twickenham train station and seeing all the fans walking to the ground is such a cool thing to see. People line the streets with their signs and England shirts, then as we pull up to the stadium everyone claps and cheers our names.
I remember feeling so proud to be experiencing a moment in women’s rugby and being able to live it in the moment. It was so surreal because it was the first time anyone in that coach had experienced that occasion before.
They’ve sold 45,000 tickets already, so we know it’s going to be another massive occasion and I cannot wait to be involved again this year. We haven’t said too much in training around what a big deal the occasion is, partly because we want to keep our pre-match nerves to a minimum, and also because it’s something for us to really look forward to rather than feel daunted by. Marlie spoke in the week about Twickenham being our home patch, and that these fans have come to watch us and cheer us on.
This doesn’t mean we’re not preparing for it though; there have been a few methods we’ve used in training to help get us ready for the experience, like simulating crowd noises to give us a feel for what it’s going to be like. For our line outs we work a lot around calls and we know that on the day Twickenham is going to be loud, so we want to make sure we’ve trained for it to make sure everything is as clear as it needs to be.
We definitely came away from Scotland with lots of work-ons, but our preparation for Ireland hasn’t really changed. They’re coming off the back of a good win against Wales last week so we know their tails are going to be up, but from our point of view we are unmoved and focusing on what we can do to be better than the week before.
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