{"id":582997,"date":"2021-02-08T14:47:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T19:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=582997"},"modified":"2021-02-08T14:47:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T19:47:47","slug":"rio-hardy-cyprus-apollon-limassol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/02\/08\/rio-hardy-cyprus-apollon-limassol\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio Hardy Living the Dream Out in Cyprus With Apollon Limassol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apollon Limassol<\/a> centre-forward Rio Hardy is living the dream out in Cyprus with her twin sister Steffi Hardy and says the standard of football on the island is improving all the time.<\/p>\n

Rio Hardy Enjoying Her Football Out in Cyprus<\/h2>\n

Hardy Impressed With Backing for Women’s Football<\/h3>\n

The Hardy twins compete in the nine-team Cypriot First Division, and Rio spoke about the tremendous backing her club gives to women\u2019s football.<\/p>\n

In a virtual press conference organised by NextGen Sport Solutions<\/a>, she said: \u201cWe have the same name as the men\u2019s team, but we\u2019re not affiliated with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our support comes from our club president, the vice president and the board members. Although we\u2019re not affiliated with the men\u2019s team, we\u2019re still very well supported here.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, I\u2019ve definitely seen an improvement since I\u2019ve arrived, not just in our team, but in other teams as well. The others see the standard we\u2019ve set ourselves and they\u2019re fighting to try and make themselves better. Most of the teams train every night, so there are improvements coming from all around the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apollon Limassol a Dominant Force<\/h3>\n

Hardy is part of a Limassol team that are the current reigning champions and dominant force on the island, winning all 16 of their league games at the time of writing and scoring 93 goals in the process.<\/p>\n

Despite the gap in quality between Limassol and the rest, the 24-year-old says the players are constantly kept on their toes and explained there is no room for complacency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very dominant, but our coach gives us little goals in training, in terms of working on one-touch finishing or finishing from a cross.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coach gives us these things that we work on, but it\u2019s also up to us as players to make it challenging for ourselves and create the intensity we need to reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of that comes from the way we train; We train pretty much every day, so we have that drive to make ourselves better and take that into games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this environment where it\u2019s okay to make mistakes and we can try anything we want to as players to express ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Island Life<\/h3>\n

The forward spoke more about the lifestyle on the island and explained that a tenuous grasp of Greek has not caused her too many problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody on the island speaks English fluently, so I\u2019ve not had any problems with communication. In terms of our team, we have girls from a lot of different countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast season we had something like nine different nationalities on our team, so you learn a little bit of each language. It\u2019s usually the bad words you learn! I know a few words in Greek, but I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m fluent by any means!<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of our training, we try not to stay outside too much in the summer because it can get up to 40 degrees, so we\u2019ll go and train indoors in an air-conditioned environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overall way of life here is very relaxed, and in my spare time I can go to the beach or grab a coffee \u2013 that suits me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long-Term Ambition to Return to England<\/h3>\n

Despite being content in Cyprus, Hardy admits her long-term ambition would be to return to England and play under the management of a former Lioness captain in the Women\u2019s Super League.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my dream to play in England. To play in the top division in your own country is something you always want to do as a kid. With the WSL becoming more professional each year, that dream becomes bigger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to play for Manchester United.<\/a> It\u2019s great to see how much they\u2019ve progressed in a short space of time \u2013 not just as a player, but as a fan too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to see Manchester United are now putting money into their women\u2019s team. A few years ago, they didn\u2019t have one.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, to go from nothing to being close to the top of the league and challenging for the Champions League places is an amazing thing to do in such a short space of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apollon Limassol centre-forward Rio Hardy is living the dream out in Cyprus with her twin sister Steffi Hardy and says the standard of football on the island is improving all the time. Rio Hardy Enjoying Her Football Out in Cyprus Hardy Impressed With Backing for Women’s Football The Hardy twins compete in the nine-team Cypriot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3766,"featured_media":583032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7007],"tags":[8182,6412,36,8117,8183,136],"class_list":["post-582997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-womens-football","tag-apollon-limassol","tag-cyprus","tag-manchester-united","tag-rio-hardy","tag-steffi-hardy","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}