Lucia Kendall tells her grassroots story

My first grassroots team was Winchester City Flyers. I played in the under-9s – I must’ve been six or seven. I was there for about four years. It was my local team – they were five minutes away.

The growth that I’ve seen there is amazing. When I played, there was one team for every other age group. My dad actually text me the other day telling me that he ran past where they train and said they’ve got 60 or 70 kids in the age group. It’s amazing to see the growth.

What I really remember is playing in the park with my dad, my brother, even my sister as well. That was my first memory. I can’t really remember what came first but I started playing in the playground with the boys at school and I just enjoyed it and wanted to play so that’s why I joined.

I grew up with that and then I moved to the Hampshire FA when I was eleven, which transitioned to Southampton.

It was just fun. I loved the tournaments when you’d play about ten games in a day in the summer. It was so just much fun. You just play it because you love it. I think it’s the enjoyment of it all.

I grew up around sport. I played a lot of sports as a kid and just fell in love with it. I played cricket until I was 16 and played for England and Hampshire. I’m glad that I played them both for that long.

I think that playing multiple sports is really good for your development and you learn different aspects of the game – you probably don’t even think they’re applicable to each other but they actually are.

When I was transitioning to Southampton first team, that’s when I obviously had to make the decision but both my cricket and football teams were so supportive. I’d miss a bit of training here and there to do the other one but it worked pretty well.

I went and back and forth a lot. There were times where I just wanted to play cricket and my parents said, ‘no, Luce, just keep going with both – you can do both’. Eventually, I was enjoying football more. I wasn’t always football and cricket on the side. I’m grateful to my parents really for making me carry on!

I watched Match of the Day every Sunday. I was a Chelsea fan when I was a kid, so I loved Frank Lampard – he was a box-to-box midfielder, he scored goals.

My first real memory of watching England women was in the World Cup in 2015. That’s the first time I saw it and thought, ‘I want to do that’. I think that was quite inspirational seeing that and now seeing the growth that it’s gone through to get to where it is now.

My experience of the England development teams has been so good. I came through the under-15s, all the way through to the under-23s – the under-23s has definitely prepared me. It’s quite similar to the way that the seniors work, so it’s been quite a smooth transition for me.

Going to the U19 EUROs was a good experience, although we didn’t do what we wanted to do. Just experiencing those moments together and being with some of your best friends – people that you share the pitch with.

I liked the experiences and playing against top international teams. It’s definitely stood me in good stead. I’m someone that just wants to learn and get better.

We’re so lucky to be able to do what we do and just to enjoy it. You can put so much pressure on yourself and there can be so much pressure but it’s important to take it all in because this is what you wanted to do when you’re a kid and we’re lucky to be able to do this every day.