Lionesses take part in Aboriginal ceremony to imbue them with strength

Lionesses warm up for round two! England stars undergo traditional Aboriginal ‘cleansing’ and blessing ceremony to give them with strength and ‘lightness’ ahead of crunch World Cup clash with Denmark tomorrow

• Darkinjung man Jackamara Leslie led ceremony to help cleanse and bless team

England’s Lionesses have prepared for their World Cup clash against Denmark in Australia with a traditional Aboriginal blessing to festoon them with extra strength.

The team – captained by Millie Bright – took part in the unique cleansing ritual, which is also said to make them feel lighter to run as well as more powerful.

It was led by one of the Darkinjung people Jackamara Leslie, who performed the traditional custom on the pitch where the women were training.

The ritual saw him burn local leaves and plants and drift the smoke onto the grass and around the players.

He explained: ‘My name is Jackamara. Jackamara Leslie. I come from the central coast I come here for a special day today today to do a cleansing ceremony. It’s a cleansing and it’s a blessing ceremony too.

The Lionesses took part in the traditional blessing and cleansing ceremony ahead of the clash

Wiegman, seen today, made no changes to her starting team throughout the Euros last summer

‘Make them feel strong, yeah, make them feel light.

‘They’ve been welcomed to this country and everyone that come to Australia to aboriginal country they’ve got to be cleansed and that’s a cleansing ceremony.’

The team have been enjoying some well-earned down time in the past week, even taking in whale watching as part of their recuperation.

But tomorrow they face a stiff test in the form of Denmark at 9.30am GMT. 

Earlier today England manager Sarina Wiegman admitted she may make an out of character decision to alter her starting XI for the match.

The Lionesses have now gone four games without a goal from open play, with Wiegman acknowledging her team lacked ‘ruthlessness’ after they needed a Georgia Stanway penalty to beat minnows Haiti in their opening match.

Wiegman is renowned for rarely making changes to her team during tournaments and picked the same starting line-up for every game of last summer’s European Championship. As manager of the Netherlands, she made two changes at the 2019 World Cup and three during the 2017 Euros, two of which were enforced.’

Asked whether she will be ‘ruthless’ when it comes to her team selection today, the manager said: ‘That I’m more likely to make changes doesn’t have to do with that [ruthlessness], I want to make changes.

‘What we do is approach every game and then when we get ready to prepare, first of all we see who is fit and available and then we make the decisions to what we need to start with and then we decide whether we’re going to start with the same XI or maybe make some changes.

Sarina Wiegman claimed she wants to make changes to her England side against Denmark

The Lionesses put in an underwhelming performance against Haiti, with Alessia Russo in attack criticised

‘We talked about ruthlessness and we also said ‘what’s ruthlessness?’ We talked about coming into the final third, the crosses being right, coming into the box at the right time, and we worked on that. Today looked really good actually. We’re really looking forward to the game.’

Wiegman was joined in her pre-match press conference by Lucy Bronze, who insisted results are more important than how many goals England score.

‘Every game, it’s [the performance] important to you. You could go the World Cup and win it by winning 1-0 all the time or drawing and winning on penalties.

‘Performances mean a lot to us but results are important too. It’s not always about scoring seven goals. If you have enough to win the game, that’s important.

‘The performances are there in games, from individuals and collectively, it’s just being more ruthless, more clinical in front of goal and I don’t think people would talk as much about performances and results then.’

Georgia Stanway’s penalty was the difference as England edged the underdogs on Saturday

Denmark secured a 1-0 win over China in their opening match at the Women’s World Cup

Denmark beat China 1-0 in their opening match but manager Lars Sondergaard insisted his team, ranked 13th in the world, are the clear underdogs in Friday’s game.

‘Sometimes when you enter a match you are underdogs and you need to perform well against a superpower such as England,’ Sondergaard said.

‘It’s easier said than done, but there’s a World Cup every four years, you don’t get many of these opportunities in your career. So it would be a mortal sin not to enjoy it.

‘It’s a fantastic occasion for us, we’re looking forward to it, it’ll be difficult, England have a very good team, European champions, we are the underdogs. We hope that you will be surprised.’

Denmark’s main goal threat will be their captain Pernille Harder, who comes up against her former Chelsea team-mates Millie Bright and Jess Carter.

‘I have felt Millie in training,’ Harder said on Thursday. ‘She goes 110 per cent in the duels! She’s a great player. She’s tough. She goes 110 percent into everything she does. It’ll be difficult but I’ll do everything I can do to also make it difficult for her [too].’

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