England international Sue Smith blogs exclusively for Sportsister from the World Cup qualifier in Turkey.

Greetings from Turkey

I don’t mean to brag but our trip has been lovely. Obviously we have been working very hard with our training schedule and meetings but this place, Izmir, is idyllic. We are staying in a 5 star hotel right by the sea and the weather has been in the 20’s and sunny.

It seems so far away from the floods and devastation that has been happening back home. For Leeds we have had two games cancelled due to the rain. The worst one was against Millwall at the weekend, we travelled down on the Saturday, got to the ground we were all just about to warm up and the referee called the game off. This means we have still only played one game in November.

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Read more from Sue Smith’s blog for Sportsister:

Football blog: Greetings from not so sunny La Manga ^[1] - Sue writes to us from the England training camp in La Manga, Spain.

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I will stop moaning at how the weather has affected our football, some parts of Cumbria the weather has affected their entire lives. My brother and my little niece Ella live in Carlisle and thankfully they are ok due to the flood defences that were put up a few years ago. Only a few miles down the road though people’s homes have been wrecked, some are stranded unable to get food supplies and even lives have been lost. My thoughts go out to these people and hopefully things will be sorted really soon.

Birthday celebrations

Can you believe I am now officially an adult; I turned 30 on Tuesday and being away in Turkey with the England girls definitely made it fun. I have had the worst pictures of when I was younger posted all over the hotel. I have had to wear a T-shirt saying S.Smith and 30 on the back and various badges.

Then at dinner I had a big cake with candles on and everyone singing Happy Birthday (it was obviously a low fat cake!). All the girls made it really special and I now look forward to celebrating it with my friends and family on my return home.

Tooth dramas

I have a funny story that I will have to share with you and before you say it its nothing to do with my age. I have a bridge on my front tooth, long story but briefly I fell off a climbing frame when I was younger and knocked my front tooth clean out.

When we played Blackburn last week I got an elbow in the mouth and I straight away panicked my tooth had come out, luckily it hadn’t. Then whilst eating my dinner on Monday the tooth fell out - thankfully it wasn’t a romantic meal for two! If anyone has lost their front tooth they will realise it is very difficult to say any words beginning with F or T.

I phoned the dentist first thing in the morning only to be told by the receptionist they can’t fit me in for a week. I laughed and was like surely this is an emergency, after lots of arguing I managed to get in that afternoon. But that morning the amount of people I bumped into was un-real. I even tried to put a chewing gum there; it didn’t really do the trick. So I don’t think I will live that one down for a while.

Training camp

Before the match the nerves build up, but the girls were confident we would get a result, and set us up for a relaxing Christmas knowing that we would have six points in the bag. The coaching staff had made it clear to the girls that Turkey would sit back and defend, so throughout the week we worked on how we would combat this.

We envisaged that this match would be much tougher than the Malta match. And it proved to be this. Turkey were much more technical and better organised, It took us until 70 minutes to score our first goal. This was mainly due to our girl’s superior fitness.

The camp this week was blighted with injury and illness to a number of our key first team players, however the girls that came in to replace them did the team and themselves proud. This just goes to show the strength and depth we now have, with only three girls from the final of the Euro’s starting this match. The competition for places is now more fierce than ever, which brings out the best of the players, as no one knows who will be starting each game.

Three more points

After the first goal went in the heads of the Turks dropped and we managed to score another two goals through Lianne Sanderson and Rachel Unitt. At the end of the match our manager, Hope, was disappointed with our performance. This just shows the level of expectation and how the standard of our football has improved.

I now look forward to club games for Leeds over festive period. So as always my nutrition will be even more strictly monitored as come January I will be fitness tested for England. So I will limit the amount of Christmas pudding I have this year.

P.s Check out my new website www.suesmith8.com ^[2] for my new calendar and posters which are for sale. They would make a great Christmas present!

Sue Smith, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine