Mansfield's Jo Potter ready and waiting to take England chance

Potter came on as a late substitute as England sealed a 2-0 win over Spain in their second group stage game at the Rat Verlegh Stadion in Breda.

Fran Kirby and Jodie Taylor were on the scoresheet for England as the Lionesses showed their dominance and sent out a statement of intent with the comfortable win in the game that was considered their toughest in the group.

After getting some game time against Spain, Potter spoke of her potential chance to get more minutes: “It’s always nice to start games and play more of a part but the team has done superbly the last couple of games.

“Everybody wants to get minutes and play, which all 23 of us do in this tournament. If I get to play I’ll give it 100 per cent, if I don’t hopefully I’ll play a major part. But everyone wants to play, hopefully fingers crossed, you never know,” the Reading midfielder said.

Potter has had just over 30 England caps prior to the tournament and was first called up to the senior team in 2004.

However she had to pull out of her first initial call up against Nigeria through injury and later made her first appearance later in that year against the Netherlands, the host nation of the current EUROS.

Potter is also happy with England’s vast improvement over a seemingly short space of time.

She added: “It’s no coincidence and it’s definitely not an overnight thing. We’ve done so much work on our togetherness, both on the pitch and off the pitch.

“We’ve worked with our strikers, the amount of individual work they’ve gone through over the last six weeks in our prep camp, they’ve done unbelievable amounts of individual work and repetition after repetition.

“It doesn’t come overnight, these girls have worked really, really hard at being at the top of the game. I think it’s come at the right time, the timing has been superb.”

Pic by Joe Perch.