Chapman relishing her big day

While other players might be dreading the occasion or anxiously counting down the hours to kick-off, England midfielder Katie Chapman cut a relaxed figure as she said she is "looking forward" to Sunday's UEFA WOMEN'S EURO 2009™ semi-final with the Netherlands.

More to come
The Arsenal LFC player has enjoyed a good tournament, despite having to fill in at the back on more than one occasion, and she hopes to still be smiling after the high-stakes match in Tampere. "It will be the biggest [game of my career] and I'm quite looking forward to it, actually," she said. "I excited that we've come this far. I just hope we progress from this. We want to go out there and give it our best performance. We don't feel we've played our best at the moment and we feel we have more to come. Hopefully we'll prove that."

Attacking threat
Finding a way through the Netherlands defence proved too difficult a task for France in the quarter-finals, but Chapman is confident England have what it takes to score against any opponents. "I think we just need to be patient and not panic," she said. "We just have to play our game. We'll work out a way to break them down. If we play quickly and play our game – the way we play on the floor – then I can't see that we'll have a problem."

Penalty preparations
Should she and her team-mates fail to find the back of the net, the match could, of course, be settled by penalties. That proved France's undoing on Thursday, with the Netherlands having prepared more thoroughly for the possibility of spot-kicks, but Chapman believes England would have nothing to fear from a shoot-out, explaining: "We're looking to win within the 90 minutes and we don't want it to go to penalties, but if it comes to that we've got good penalty takers in the team and we've practised quite a lot, so we can be quite confident."