The England Under-21 skipper talks exclusively to TheFA.com ahead of tonight's opening Under-21 Championship match.

It's match day today and all the preparations have gone really well. Yesterday we trained in the morning, and the gaffer had to drag us off. It's so warm and most players love these sort of conditions. As I said yester day the mood is brilliant and everyone is really geared up for tonight's game.

As captain I have one foot in the manager's camp and one foot in the players' camp, and I'm sort of a pivotal point for a lot of feedback. Some of the lads felt that the Wednesday afternoon had dragged a bit so I told the gaffer and the training was put back half an hour.

After lunch I did the daily press conference which was very relaxed and I was asked a lot of questions about when I played cricket for Lancashire in my early teens. I was a wicket keeper and batted at number three and really enjoyed cricket as it gave me something to do during the summer. But my dream was always to be a footballer. There also seems to be a rumour going around that I was some kind of child rugby league star! I only played a few games for my school and got invited to a day with Wigan, but that was as far as it went and there was never a serious chance of it going any further.

After the press conference I took a tram ride with a group of photographers and a TV camera crew down to the river to do an interview. It was a good laugh and something a bit different, although we got a few funny looks from passengers along the way. I also got to see a bit more of the town - it's a shame to go to a place and not see anything at all.

Today we’re doing a light training session in the morning and then resting ahead of the game. As the host country Switzerland will have the crowd behind them and apparently it’s going to be close to a sell-out. They're not in the World Cup so they won't be losing any players to the senior team, so we won't be underestimating them. Obviously we know about Italy and Portugal because we played them so recently, but I'm sure tonight's match will also be a difficult one.

In the other group France won their first game last night 2-0 against the Czech Republic, and you would have to count them among the real favourites. Belgium beat Greece and that's impressive because we know how tough the Greeks are. They beat us away in qualification and we had to dig deep to get some revenge at Ewood Park.

Well, it's time to get ready for training now but hopefully we can get a good result to launch our campaign tonight. The confidence is there, now we have to do the business on the pitch.