Thursday 5 December 2019 15:48, UK
George Fisher is back with a new Sky Sports netball diary and she lifts the lid on England Roses' recent tours, tells us more about her unique LeBron trainers and shares her thoughts on their recent wins in South Africa.
I'm back! I can't believe that it's December already - my absolute favourite time of the year. It's been a while since my last blog, and I'm excited to update you on what's been happening in my world!
First, let's travel back to July. I may not have been in the Roses' Netball World Cup squad but I was still a part of the team.
My Netball World Cup experience started with helping to present inside the M&S Bank Arena at Liverpool and I also had my first try at commentating on the radio. This was amazing and commentating is definitely something I would love to do more of in the future.
Also, I was also honoured to play in the Sports Relief charity match as a part of Jennifer Saunders' Munchkins team. My team was so funny and we had such a laugh doing this and all for a great cause.
Not only was I back with my old coach Tamsin Greenway, but I also shared the court with some total netball legends like Irene Van Dyke and Mary Waya and Olympians Katherine Merry and Katherine Granger. What a day!
Throughout the World Cup you could also find me courtside cheering on my England team-mates. I'm dead proud of the girls and of how the World Cup has inspired the next generation of netballers in England.
For the whole of August, I took a break which was awesome and managed to have a few mini breaks with friends and family, discovering different cultures and foods in Morocco, Greece, Croatia and Spain. I did some exploring and found a passion for scuba diving... Thank you Lucy Harris, the next step is to become a qualified diver!
With the summer finally over it was back to reality and September meant starting my fourth year with the England Roses and the beginning of my final year at university.
There were lots of changes for the Roses, with new head coach in Jess Thirlby and a few new faces in camp. We kicked off with an intense 11-day team building/training camp in Sedburgh in the Lake District.
This involved mountain biking, hill runs, rafting, open water swimming and of course gym and court sessions. The outdoors elements were run by the British Army so as you can imagine, they were pretty intense!
I wasn't overly keen on mountain biking in the pouring rain - much to my dad's disappointment as he was a mad mountain biker in his day. The hill/mountain runs, all tied together, were not exactly what you'd call fun! But, I survived and it was a great way to get to know each other better.
The next stop after that was Australia and New Zealand. It was great to be selected for this development tour as it was an awesome opportunity for us to start putting new combinations together and to try new things.
We left on September 23 for a 19-day tour and played practice games in Australia and then moved onto New Zealand for the main competition. As always I learnt a tonne and I got to meet the legend that is Norma Plummer, who passed on a couple of tips.
Oh, and I also celebrated my 21st birthday while on tour with my netball family. I came down in the morning and there was a Tiffany's gift bag and cards waiting for me and I thought wow the girls had really splashed out on me this year until I opened it and realised it was from my mum and dad!
Bless! They'd arranged it all before I left, but my girls did not disappoint as the whole squad spoilt me and threw me a surprise birthday BBQ. Every girl wants to be treated like a princess on their birthday.
Then, in a flash October arrived and we were back from tour, had more training camps and trials, all ahead of the Tests with South Africa. I was really honoured to be selected for this tour as it was a ranked Test series and would be our first outing as this new group.
Everyone was excited to see what we could do. We flew to Cape Town on November 23 and arrived with beautiful sunny weather, which was awesome. We had a few training sessions and then went straight into match play with three games in three days.
I'm so pleased to say we won the series, which was a great start to our campaign and it felt so good getting out there on court and even had a cheeky little interview, mainly about my LeBron Equality Basketball trainers and their meaning!
I was a bit worried as they absolutely stank and I still can't understand why Caroline didn't want to smell them!!
I have been trying to get rid of the smell, using all sorts of remedies from baking powder to tea tree oil and denture tablets but so far without success! Any suggestions welcomed... and at least I've got a new pair ready for the new Superleague season.
What's next? Well, I'm off to Bath this weekend with Saracens Mavericks for The Big Showdown and Manchester the following weekend for some more pre-season matches - I don't think the weather will as nice as it was in South Africa though.
After that it's back in camp for our final session of 2019 and then trials for the Vitality Nations Cup competition! Wish me luck!
Sky Sports is your home of netball and live action returns with the Vitality Nations Cup in January 2020. The four-nation competition starts on January 19 with England taking on the world champions New Zealand.
