We're ready

	14 Jul 2008
	VIDEO: James Tomkins
	England U19 vice-captain James Tomkins believes the squad are ready for the challenge of the Euros.

England U19 defender James Tomkins believes the Young Lions are fully prepared for the European Championships, which get underway on Monday evening.

In what is the competition's opening game, Brian Eastick's team take on their hosts the Czech Republic in Jablonec and after almost a week of training since joining up last Tuesday, the West Ham United starlet is just looking forward to starting the games.

"We're all ready now. We've been training in Colchester for a few days and  and we've been up for it for quite a while now," he told TheFA.com

"We had a good tournament in Belarus so our confidence is quite high at the moment."

With the match being screened live on television across Europe and expected to attract a sell out crowd, it should be some occasion but given several players in the squad have experienced playing in the U17 World Cup last year, not to mention first team games for their clubs, Tomkins feels the atmosphere could work in England's favour.

"We're aware that obviously we're playing the host nation so the crowd is going to be quite big but most of the boys have experience of big crowds so that will help us going into this game," he added.

"We're expecting decent opposition, we've had an analysis on them and we're preparing ourselves in ther right way.

"They will be technically good and big and strong athletes, but we're not worried about them at the moment, we're concentrating on ourselves and playing well."

As a mainstay of the Young Lions defence this season, which didn't concede a single goal in the Elite Qualifying round in May, Tomkins also knows if the team can maintain that solidity, it's a good platform to build upon.

"There have been a lot of good performances, and some not so good performances, but we look at them and build from it," he added.

"We kept three clean sheets in Belarus and that's good because if you keep clean sheets, you can always win games.

"So we're all confident, we've had a good year and we want to take it into the Euros now."

The Squad