Speaker 1: It was interesting you said it was quite stressful for
Speaker 1: you when I like that really top level, high level
Speaker 1: intensity and being the hunter not the hunter anymore. But
Speaker 1: you still were the British Fed Cup captain for five years,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming there were parts of the job that
Speaker 1: you really enjoyed, particularly taking the British team from the
Speaker 1: Zono groups. I think they got to the cusp of
Speaker 1: the World Group or maybe playing off for it. So
Speaker 1: what did you love about working with the top British
Speaker 1: women's players in that time?
Speaker 2: I think that you know, when I took the role on,
Speaker 2: we were in the Euro Africa zone, and of course
Speaker 2: I'd never done anything like that before. I had captain county
Speaker 2: teams and I've obviously had captain the Scottish teams in
Speaker 2: the friendly internationals. Things that we've had quite quite different,
Speaker 2: so I didn't really know what was what I was
Speaker 2: what I was getting into. But I know how to
Speaker 2: build teams and I know how to bring people, to
Speaker 2: bring people together. And we went over to Egypt to
Speaker 2: Israel sorry for our first in February twenty twelve, and
Speaker 2: there were sixteen teams in our group and we went
Speaker 2: five days in advance of its starting There was only
Speaker 2: one other team there with us that far in advance,
Speaker 2: which was Estonia, and Estonia had one male coach and
Speaker 2: four players. The four players stayed in one room, and
Speaker 2: we had as a wealthy governing body of the LTA,
Speaker 2: we had our fitness trainer, Visio. I took a video analyst.
Speaker 2: I had to fight for that, but I got it.
Speaker 2: We had a team room. Each of our players had
Speaker 2: their own room, and we were able to be there
Speaker 2: to prepare for four or five days before. And the
Speaker 2: reason for going so far in advance of that for
Speaker 2: me was building the team together. You know, I had
Speaker 2: Laura Robson and Heather Watson as to eighteen and nineteen,
Speaker 2: and An Kiothovong and Elena Baltasha, who were both coming
Speaker 2: towards the end of their careers, sort of twenty nine,
Speaker 2: twenty eight, twenty nine year olds and brilliant, brilliant, give
Speaker 2: you everything, and the young ones were hugely exciting prospects.
Speaker 2: But it, you know, it was it was actually a
Speaker 2: really good mix and it worked incredibly well. But when
Speaker 2: I went to pick a backroom staff to come with me,
Speaker 2: this was probably sort of December time, and I went
Speaker 2: down to the LTA, and I was really amazed to
Speaker 2: discover that there was There were no female fitness trainers,
Speaker 2: there were no female videos, there were no female video analysts,
Speaker 2: and I was like, they didn't they just didn't exist.
Speaker 2: It was it was all guys. And I took an
Speaker 2: all male team and they were all great, But my
Speaker 2: point was, why aren't there any women? You know, we're
Speaker 2: women's team. I was the first female captain for many
Speaker 2: many years. I'd always been male captains, and you know,
Speaker 2: I set about asking questions and saying, look, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with females emotions and females bodies especially,
Speaker 2: we need some women in the workforce. I wasn't looking
Speaker 2: for an all female team, Don't get me wrong. I wasn't,
Speaker 2: but I set about doing something about that. And you know, now,
Speaker 2: obviously it's nine years later, but we have female hydeos,
Speaker 2: and we have female fitness trainers, and we have female
Speaker 2: video analysts, and we have female managers who can come
Speaker 2: and you know, and help to do all the logistics
Speaker 2: and so forth. So I felt like as well as
Speaker 2: trying to build the team, and you know, in bringing
Speaker 2: a video analyst with us, none of our girls had
Speaker 2: ever had their matches analyzed or been presented with video
Speaker 2: analysis of an opponent before a match. Like for me,
Speaker 2: I'd been doing that since two thousand and four in Scotland.
Speaker 2: I taught myself how to do it and it's very
Speaker 2: time consuming, but yes, really, it really really is. But
Speaker 2: I taught myself how to do it because you know,
Speaker 2: when I was a national coach, I had no resource,
Speaker 2: so it was almost like, if I need to learn something,
Speaker 2: we're going to have to learn it myself. But that
Speaker 2: blew me away that you know, with the LTA, with
Speaker 2: all of its you know, Grand Slam Nation and with
Speaker 2: all of its huge budget, nobody was doing that. So anyway,
Speaker 2: we did a lot of that. But in the five
Speaker 2: days running up to that, we had a great time. Everything.
Speaker 2: In the evening we played team games and it was
Speaker 2: always the girls against the boys, always and that was
Speaker 2: done on purpose to make us bond as a unit.
Speaker 2: So you know, whether it was past the bomb or pittionary,
Speaker 2: but we had honestly the best time and by the
Speaker 2: time we got going, because nobody comes to watch in
Speaker 2: those zones unless you're the home team, nobody comes to watch,
Speaker 2: so you really have to make your own noise. We
Speaker 2: had the drum kits and all the rest of it,
Speaker 2: and freezing cold. If you had a night match, it
Speaker 2: was just it was like playing a club match, a
Speaker 2: lot of it. But we made our own noise and
Speaker 2: we made a great team spirit and one of the
Speaker 2: things that I was particularly proud of at the end
Speaker 2: of that very first campaign. Yes, we got through into
Speaker 2: a playoff for the World Group where we went to Sweden,
Speaker 2: but and Kiothovani and Elena Batasha, who are exactly the
Speaker 2: same year of birth, exactly the same age, came all
Speaker 2: through juniors to huge arrivals and juniors they didn't speak
Speaker 2: to each other. They would make a little bit of
Speaker 2: an effort for fed Cup, or so I was told,
Speaker 2: but they never spoke to each other. And actually by
Speaker 2: the end of that fed Cup campaign, they were sitting
Speaker 2: beside each other on the bus to the airport, they
Speaker 2: sat beside each other on the flight home, and they
Speaker 2: had agreed to play doubles together and to try to
Speaker 2: get into the Olympics doubles together, which of course was
Speaker 2: going to be in London in July, and for me
Speaker 2: that was a massive success. But what definitely through that
Speaker 2: period that I was fed cup. We created a great
Speaker 2: support group of our women by telling them. And this
Speaker 2: goes back to what I was saying about the small pond.
Speaker 2: It's too easy to be rivals within a small pond.
Speaker 2: I was saying to them, it is not about you
Speaker 2: against you. This is about us together against the rest
Speaker 2: of the world, and we all work together and we
Speaker 2: support each other. Wherever your playing.
Speaker 1: To catch the rest of this episode, you can find
Speaker 1: the link to the full show in the show notes,
Speaker 1: or by heading to the sit Down wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your podcasts, M