The first day of any tournament that I've attended whether as a player, a coach or now as an official, I find that: my nerves are jangling, my blood is bubbling away just under the surface of the skin; and my heart rate is slightly elevated. I simply want to make that good first impression, whilst as an official I want to be invisible, quite the contra diction in terms, but still a fact all the same.

Our umpiring schedule has been published for the first six days, taking us to the point of the quarterfinals. For the first time ever, we have enough officials for our Head Td and Assignor, Jackie, to go neutral on the games i.e. Canada v USA, previously would have seen a balanced assignment of Cheryl (Canada) Mara (USA) + Charge official Madge (Wales) for instance. A neutral assignment could look like: Eri (Japan), Liz (Australia) and Charge Official Karen (Wales).

I'm passionate about England Football (yes, that's the game where you kick a spherical ball with your foot and not the game where you throw and catch a rugby shaped ball around), Rugby, Cricket etc etc. I was born and raised in England into a sporting family and I have enjoyed many many hours with my Dad watching live sport. In 2003, when I moved to Canada, my soon to be wife discovered me in the basement yelling on England Rugby team to glory down under at 4am in the morning!

One thing I am not though, is being interested in who wins a Lacrosse game, other than the Mississauga team I coach back home in Ontario. May the best team win, through skill, fair play and that bit of luck we all need from time to time.

I personally have never had a problem with umpiring England in a game and indeed have had the pleasure many many times. To me they are simply White, Red or Blue, according to the colour uniform they wear that day.

From a viewers perspective, it is always better to see officials based in countries other than those that are playing in that game, Neutrality is best, in my mind at least.

So on Day One, I'm umpiring a Group B Game Wales (European Champions) v Germany (hosts for the 2011 U19 World Championships).

I'm very fortunate because of my travels to have umpired with all the umpires here, so I'm really looking forward to having a lot of fun all week long. Today, Ann Hutchings (Eng), Liz Shields (Aus) and 4th Official Jodi Michna, make up the umpiring crew for the game. It was a beautiful day for lacrosse and we were going to have fun.

We agreed to meet up ahead of the 1pm game time, at 11am for our pre game meeting. This would allow us time to see the start of Canada v Australia at 11:30am if we wanted to. We discussed good team communication, starting positions, warm ups and positioning setting targets for the game as we went. We agreed to meet up at 12:15pm, some 10 minutes before we had to walk out to the game, pre game routine is 35 minutes before the game.

After a successful meeting, I retired to my room and simply laid down on my bed to chill. I really enjoy this quiet time ahead of a sequenced pre game 35 minutes (T - 35). I like to clear my head of all that's happened earlier in the day or since the last game. I remind myself that I have the tools to handle any situation and concentrate on doing what I know I can do... let the players play and let them decide the outcome of the game.

I've developed this routine over the past six years and its served me fairly well, though it's isolation has been discussed in previous years, so it's been adapted to ensure that in that final T -35 I stick with my team, even though I might want to warm up or stretch in a different way from my peers. The team is more important than the individual.

We met up as agreed and ran through the 35 minutes like clockwork: T-35 go to table, check in, walk the field, check nets and lines. Warm up via a jog and stretch. T-10 Stick Check, walk onto field with teams, line up, team line ups are announced, national anthems (away team first), captains talk and toss the coin; T-2 remove all extra clothing, last sip of sports drink, shake hands; T-30 seconds walk on to field to start the game.

As charge official today I started at "C".

One of my assets over the years I've umpired has been the ability to move quickly. I'm not the quickest, but I'm probably up there when you add in endurance, the ability to change direction and the ability to stay ahead of play.

Speed has also my achilles heal when I was younger, I was told I was an "Energiser Bunny", someone who never stays still. It had been 8 years since I had heard that phrase, said about me, I thought I had had that part of my game i.e. unnecessary movement, eradicated. But today, I was told that same thing. Our evaluators said I walked moved unneccesarily as deep trail and that I needed to relax and open myself more to the off ball play.

Add in my one mistake from the first half: prolonged defensive offside and being held, shot came in, hit the ground and I blew before it was picked up by another attacker, who put the ball into the net, Ouch! and you can wonder why I can say that I really enjoyed the game and so did my team, We had great communication, we worked hard together and we above all we had fun!

It's ok to make mistakes after all we are only human: excessive movement and a whistle blown too quickly, were mine today; so long as you take it on board and learn from it. That's my job now... move on and get better.

The game was an 18-3 win for Wales, but it was competitive and had enough in it for the officials to work and look like a team.

Following a shower, we had a brief post game chat where we reviewed our pre game targets, congratulated ourselves on a good day one job well done.

Time for a little alone time, for me time to reflect, inhale the criticism, internalise it and move on, ahead of the Day 2 assignment, a game in Group "A".

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