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Women's sport: Niamh Charles, Ellie Kildunne and Sarah Gl...Niamh Charles, Ellie Kildunne and Sarah Glenn each have huge summers ahead of them in an England shirt - they chat about the impact the spotlight can have on their sports.
An 'exciting summer' of women's sport lies aheadImage source,Getty Images
Image caption,
Cricketer Sarah Glenn (left), rugby union player Ellie Kildunne and footballer Niamh Charles
Jo Currie
Women’s sport reporter
Sitting together, laughing and chatting, at The Oval cricket ground in south London, Ellie Kildunne, Niamh Charles and Sarah Glenn could pass for any other 25-year-olds.
But they are professional sportswomen who each have huge summers ahead of them in an England shirt.
Footballer Charles is hoping to help the Lionesses defend their Women's Euros title in Switzerland in July, before Kildunne aims to lift the Women's Rugby World Cup in England in September and Glenn targets Cricket World Cup glory in India in the same month.
Women's sport takes centre stage across the BBC this summer and it is an ideal time to bring the trio together, to compare and contrast stories and hear how preparations are going.
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Will Red Roses have their Lionesses moment?
How big could this year be for your sport?
02:35
Media caption,
Logan hopes Rugby World Cup has similar impact to Lionesses' Euros win
Footballer Niamh Charles: We know that the expectation is going to be there after
winning in 2022. It's such an exciting prospect but it's not the exact same as we're a new team.
The women's game is growing so much. All the other teams have got so much better as well. It's about who turns up in the tournament.
We're lucky we've had lots of good games before to prepare so I think we're not looking to peak right now, but when it comes to the Euros we're going to hopefully have used all those games to be in the best position from that first game and see what happens.
Cricketer Sarah Glenn: We had a really
tough winter [England lost 16-0 to Australia in the Women's Ashes]. We've got the India series coming up this summer at home and those games can be quite chaotic sometimes.
We're good rivals, we get good crowds in and obviously there will be that pressure there.
But for us, it's just a great opportunity to show how good we are and to get those wins and, obviously with Lottie [head coach Charlotte Edwards] coming in and Nat Sciver-Brunt as the new captain too, it will be like a breath of fresh air for the group.
It's a really exciting summer. I trust in the process and let the outcome take care of itself.
Rugby union player Ellie Kildunne: People expect a lot from us, being
a successful team.
But we were expected to win the last World Cup and we didn't, so it is a really huge tournament.
Everyone shows up for major tournaments so it doesn't matter what the world's saying about how well they expect us to do, we know there's a lot of work to be done.
The fact that people are expecting something massive from us is a very cool and special place to be, but we know that there's work to be done still.
We're still looking to improve, we can still get better and as long as we can keep striving for better and the best, I think we'll be in a very good spot come this World Cup.
When did you decide to become a professional athlete?Kildunne: I played quite a lot of sports growing up and I didn't really know what path to go down, because I just loved playing sport.
When I was playing rugby for Gloucester, I was also sneaking home on the weekends and playing football.
Then I got asked to play rugby for England and was given a contract. That's when I knew that it could be a profession, and I could be a full-time athlete.
We're really getting into that place now where the game is definitely growing. There's more investment going into it and you can see that professionalism, and how that can really accelerate the growth of the sport.
Glenn: I played cricket and hockey. Balancing those two was pretty tough and I did think about which path I wanted to take.
I played in the Kia Super League in 2017 and it was my first professional tournament. It was really inspiring because we were getting crowds in and there were young kids coming to watch us, and we could chat to them afterwards.
When I picked up my first England contract, even though that was amazing, there wasn't too much structure to the domestic game. There was a huge amount of pressure on that England contract because otherwise I'd have to pick up a job alongside that.
Now, more contracts have come into our domestic league. I can represent England and my county, which I'm really proud to do as well. And that for me was the biggest turning point. No matter who I was, I could make cricket my lifestyle.
