England Vs Australia in Las Vegas: Leonese of Great Britain recalls the 1996 tour

Sheldon and Thompson knew Nikki Carter, an Hull Vixens player who had experience of management from work in a nursing home. They asked if it would enter as a tour manager.

“I was asked, ‘Do you think you could help them?'” Carter says.

“I was like: ‘What do you mean?’ They said: “Go to Australia with them”.

“But suddenly he started to reveal. Many things that should have been organized 12 weeks after going to Australia were not actually organized.”

The Tournée party had no flights, accommodation, no kits.

Sheldon says: “The previous manager, before Nikki, had had the task of securing flights and did not insure them and did not say it, so it was only about three weeks before everything came out that we had no flights.

“My manager allowed me to work to call all airlines to try to get 32 ​​flights to three weeks of notice.”

While Sheldon ordered the flights, the cards of origin of the kit, chased the hotels and contributed to completing the fundraising. “Most of the money has been collected in the last eight weeks,” he says. They needed to quickly create a bank account for the tour. And in 1996, this was a problem.

“There was no bank account set up in Australia”, says Carter, “and it was not like now, where you could play the bank and say:” I intend to put this money in there and I will spend them from my bank account “.

“One of the girls on the tour, who played for Wakefield, was a bank manager. And he said:” It is not possible to create the bank account. It took too long. “

“So I ended up going to Australia with a briefcase with £ 29,000 in cash and travelers, because there was no other way. I brought that briefcase during the entire tour – wherever I went, it went.”