Wendy and The Girl Do England – Part 1

The Girl and I landed at Heathrow around 11:00am on Sat Morning (8/28) and headed straight to the fields at Surrey University. The drive in was quite long as it is a “Bank Holiday” (UK workers get random holidays off from work!) but it gave us a good oppurtunity to get to know one of our hosts quite well. Ali and Sarah of Scrumqueens are graciously putting us up for the duration of our trip and since we have never “officially met,” only virtually it was a good time to get to know Sarah. We met Ali later at the fields, she was diligently taking notes for the Canada vs France game.

Once we arrrived at Guilford Park at Surrey University we quickly picked up our media passes and made our way towards the fields. We missed the first game of the day but were able to watch everything else. The facilities and fields here are amazing, but the ability of the crowd to participate is seriously lacking. There are 2 beautiful fields and the tickets were sold with the impression that there were stands, but in reality field 2 only has one stand that will seat about 50 people and field 1 has seating for about 150 people. With an advertised capacity of 3-4,000 fans, fighting for a seat or a good view along the field became a pretty big problem!

So anyways, lets skip right to the good stuff, the USA vs England game (go here for the official release from USA, read below for my version). First off, the fans were awesome with some lingering DC Furie bikinis, and plenty of noise! The USA vs England game kicked off and you could feel the tension in the air. The Girl and I were sitting in an enveloped English crowd and so we had to cheer extra loud for USA, but we were cheering!

We looked great in our blues…I think we play the best in our blues! As soon as I announced that we play well in our blues all the Englanders around me responded that they play their best in the white….so it was even on fashion! The first 30 minutes of the game was incredibly close as USA put up the best defense I have ever seen. Unfortunately the first half ended with the score of England 25, USA 5.

But USA wasn’t going down without a fight, they came out in the second half with even more fire. Unfortunately England scored early on so that seemed to take a bit of the wind out of our sails. England was having major issues with their handling during the whole game and USA was quick to jump on that transition ball. Our second try was because of great transition ball by our forwards who spun it out to the backs. Kim Magrini was following the progress of the ball like any good scrumhalf and was able to dot it over the line for a score. Overall I think this was the best team that USA has put on the field yet (minus Beckett Royce) and they played an excellent game. The HITS in this game were unbelievable by both teams! If you got to see the broadcast on Universal you will surely see the big hit that Maggie Alphonsi gave to Farrah Douglas…

USA faces Ireland tomorrow (9/1) and the game is NOT being broadcast. I will be on the sidelines (with Internet this time!) and will provide updates on Twitter, Facebook and of course here on the blog. GO USA!