Guernsey celebrate one of their goals in the 5-2 victory over the Liverpool County Premier League in the FA National League System Cup final at the Track, which booked their place in Croatia. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0961461)

As the Guernsey squad depart for Croatia today, striker Simon Tostevin writes the first of his regular blogs throughout the tournament, giving an insight into life as an England ‘international’…

IT SEEMS ages ago that we were celebrating winning the FA National League System Cup final at the Track.

The game against the Liverpool County Premier League at the start of May was a terrific occasion and one that none of us involved in the squad will forget in a long time.

But despite all the talk back then of what an amazing experience we were about to be part of, I think it sank in properly only last week when we wore the Three Lions shirt for the first time in a friendly against the Republic of Ireland’s amateur representative side in Dublin.

We lost 5-2 and, although we were all bitterly disappointed afterwards, it was a great learning experience ahead of three more tough games in Croatia.

We’ve watched the 90 minutes back as a squad on DVD and on second viewing we were not that far off an Ireland team who have come close to winning the Uefa Regions Cup in the past, although we’ve also recognised that the Irish punished our mistakes and that we gave the ball away too cheaply at times.

On Friday we hope to rectify that when we run out to play the host nation of our group.

Getting off to a good start will be so important and we’re all champing at the bit to get going – you only have to come along and see some of our small-sided games in training to see how competitive we are with the carrot of starting for England in Croatia dangling in front of us.

We’ve been training as a squad now since the middle of July and working hard on our fitness with conditions in Croatia predicted to be hot, possibly as high as 30C.

But before all that we’ve got a long day of travelling in front of us today with three flights and two coach journeys to get through before our scheduled arrival at our Split hotel at around 11pm.

Then it will be a good night’s sleep before our first training session tomorrow.Uefa Regions Cup: Long day of travelling ahead for the Football Association’s representatives