17-year-old schoolgirl Emma McEnaney caught the eye of the England selectors for her goalkeeping heroics with Newcastle Ladies.

She was invited to join a training week with other potential squad members at Reading University. It meant a week off school but Emma went with the full support of her headmaster who praised her success in a school assembly, much to Emma's surprise!

Here's her diary of a week with some of England's top players for the future. ...

Sunday 16th Feb: After playing Blyth Town in a cup match, and winning easily, my mum, dad and I jumped in the car and started on the 5 hour journey down to Reading.

At that point I was beginning to get nervous, even though everyone was saying "oh you'll be fine" etc.

The journey went really quickly and before I knew it we were there at the Holiday Inn, standing in a very busy reception area. I met my room mate (who seemed nice) then it was straight down to dinner, which consisted mainly of rice, pasta and potatoes.

After that there was a meeting basically explaining what was expected of us. It also gave me the opportunity to get to know a few people. Was still nervous but the first night wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.

Monday 17th: Alarm call at 8.30 then down to breakfast at nine. I found out that I was one of the lucky group to be wearing a heart rate monitor for the morning training session where I would be doing the dreaded bleep test! Fun!

Training took place at Reading University, about 10 minutes bus journey from our hotel. We trained for about 2 hours in the morning, had a break for lunch, then trained for a further two hours.

The other goalkeepers and I spent most of the day away from the group, training with the keeper coach. Found it very hard work as I'm not used to it but enjoyed it all the same.

I did feel a bit down at times as everyone seemed to know each other and, being shy, I found it hard to talk to people.

My favourite part of the day came when we were given a big bag of sweets and biscuits at the end of training to get our energy levels back up.

In the evening we had a meeting we the coach - the goalkeeper coach took us separately to discuss what we would be doing the next day. To be honest I didn't have a clue what he was talking about at first!

Tuesday 18th: Morning training was cancelled due to the pitches being frozen therefore I spent the whole morning lying on my bed, watching TV and relaxing. I was tired after the first day so it was quite good in one way.

In afternoon training I asked if we could work on goal kicks because that's one of my weaker areas. It started off badly and my head was going down then suddenly I blanked my mind and hit a really good one followed by three more. This made my day and my confidence came rushing back.

At night, instead of our normal meeting, Sarah Harris and Bev Ward from the FA Marketing department came to speak to us about, well marketing basically. They also told us about interviews we may have to do sometime and as part of the work shop we had to pretend to interview a partner, then come up with a headline that would reflect the nature of the story, ie whether it was positive or negative. I was a bit shy at first but once we got going it was really fun and interesting.

That was followed by a pool session to help relax muscles.

Emma practices her diving saves

Wednesday 19th: Start delayed again as the pitches were frozen. While we were there we had to do a series of tests so that the Exercise Scientist could get an idea of how fit (or unfit!) we were. One of these tests was the sprint test where we sprinted over distances between 5 and 30 metres. This we did in the hotel car park while we waited for the pitches to soften up.

We managed to do two shorter training sessions today - at times I was a bit bored as there was quite a bit of standing around waiting.

One thing that I had to get used to was drinking all the time. We had to carry a full bottle of juice or water with us everywhere, sipping at it all the time. I don't think I've ever drunk so much in my life (or been to the toliet as often!). Today was the last day of training and boy was I knackered!

Thursday 20th: Woken up at 7.30 today as there was a lot to do in a short space of time. It felt weird that the week was almost over so soon - time had flown. I didn't know whether to be happy or sad that it was the last day. Happy to be going home but sad that it was over.

Played three 10 v 10 matches while the coaches watched us and took notes on how we did. I hate playing when I know that people are watching me like that. I feel that I can't relax which can lead to mistakes. Fortunately I made none and kept a clean sheet in each game.

Then it was back to the hotel one last time for a shower and lunch. We had to hand back all our England kit - didn't get to keep a single thing - then were left to say goodbye to everyone.

I had a really good week, got some experience at international level and learnt a few things too. Plus I met some really nice people who made the week a lot easier for me.