Football a welcome distraction from studying and routine of life, admits Leeds United women captain Catherine Hamill

I’m studying for the final year of my Sports Science and Exercise degree at the moment.

Since it’s our final year, we get to choose things that most interest us, so I’m looking at ACL injuries, which are particularly prevalent in female athletes.

I’m also investigating whether hip thrusts or back squats are more beneficial for vertical jumps. As a defender, I thought it’d be useful to find out about something that I can apply to my game.

On my course, you get to do a bit of everything which is great. I’ve got a practical exam coming up where I have to test a participant on an exercise bike – the air they take in and expire, their heart rate, perceived effort, and take their blood.

I enjoy what I do, but it can be difficult to find the motivation sometimes. Tuesdays are my longest days.

I can feel myself getting grumpy when I get home. I feel bad for my family, but I can’t help it. It’s probably a good thing that I go straight off to training so they don’t have to deal with it.

Once you’re at training, you can forget about everything else. You’re just playing football. When I’ve got so much work to do, it’s easy to think I don’t have time to train, but as soon as I’m there I feel glad to have the chance to switch off.

Since so much of what I do revolves around football, I have been thinking about that interview that Arsenal defender Ben White, the former Leeds United loanee, gave last week.

I was a bit surprised to hear that he doesn’t watch much football.

I get where he’s coming from, though.

Lots of players are football mad, but I’m sure there are plenty of players out there like him.

He does football 24/7 and sometimes, if you have had a bad training session, you’d rather not think about it. It’s the same as any job.

You might love it, but you’ll likely end up being stressed by it, no matter what you do.

I usually watch Match of the Day as part of my weekend routine, but since we didn’t have a game this weekend I took the opportunity to see my friends on Saturday night.

I understand that Leeds had a disappointing game at Southampton.

I think sometimes it’s harder in the second season in the Premier League, with other teams having their measure of you.

Luckily the Newcastle game went in our favour this weekend, but it’s still early days, so it’s just a case of pushing on, which Leeds always do.

We are playing Redcar Town in our first FA Cup tie of the season on Sunday.

It’s important for us, as the more rounds you get through, the more people take an interest, wondering who you’ll be drawn against – you could end up playing teams a few leagues above.

You get a different atmosphere in the cup, it can get quite exciting, and we’ve had a couple of good runs in previous seasons so hopefully we can do it again.

It should be a good game on Sunday.

Especially with the break we’ve had, we’ll be back on it this week and ready to go.