England midfielder Ella Toone believes the Lionesses’ person-centred approach to the World Cup has prevented players from feeling “like robots” as they deal with the more difficult elements of travelling halfway around the world. Should the European champions advance from their July 22 Haiti opener all the way to the August 20th Sydney final, they will have spent nearly two months in tournament co-hosts Australia, with a nine-hour time difference and more than 10,000 miles between the Lionesses and loved ones at home. While England have quickly gotten down to business in their Queensland training sessions, they have also been permitted plenty of downtime including organised whale-watching and zoo trips or casual bonding with team-mates at the tranquil team hotel. Toone said: “We’re just normal people, aren’t we? And it’s hard to be away from home, and it’s sometimes hard to be on camp for such a long period of time, but that’s why we’ve got to make a home-away-from-home and I think that’s what we’ve done really well. “We’ve got a fantastic group of players who want the same goal, and yeah, I think we have to have that environment where we can feel like we’re at home, and we’re not just robots on camp and doing the same thing day in and day out. “It’s nice to have a bit of time off and spend time together as well, and get to see beautiful Australia as well, it definitely helps us feel like we’re not robots.” England manager Sarina Wiegman earlier in the week used the “robot” analogy when she spoke about how the holistic human approach taken by the Lionesses coaching and support staff was a deliberate choice, drawn partially from her own experience as a Netherlands international. The boss recalled moments where she found it difficult to balance the serious task of preparing for big competitions with the more fun side of travelling to take on the world with her team-mates. Toone was part of Wiegman’s squad for last summer’s Wembley triumph, and is eager to help any of the six Lionesses – Niamh Charles, Laura Coombs, Lauren James, Esme Morgan, Katie Robinson and Katie Zelem – for whom this World Cup will be their first major tournament. “Some days will be hard,” Toone added. “But you’ve got to speak to people, tell them how you’re feeling. But I think we’ve all been there, we’ve all had days where they’re all going to be a bit harder than other days. “We’re away from family for a long time which is hard, and obviously the time difference doesn’t help. You’ve definitely got to lean on the people around you, you’ve got to open up and understand that days are going to be tough but it’s how you deal with that and how you get on with it.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Trevor Francis, British football’s first £1million player, has died at the age of 69. The ex-Birmingham striker, who scored Nottingham Forest’s winner in their 1979 European Cup final triumph, earned 52 England caps and later guided Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham to major finals as a manager. Plymouth-born Francis burst onto the scene as a teenager with Birmingham, making his first-team debut at 16 in 1970. “He died in Spain this morning from a heart attack,” said a spokesman. Forest shattered the British transfer record when they paid £1.15million for him in 1979, although manager Brian Clough famously claimed the fee was £999,999 to take pressure off the player. He started his career at Birmingham, playing 328 times and scoring 133 goals. In 1971, at just 16-years-old, he became the youngest ever player to score four times in Football League history in Blues’ 4-0 win over Bolton. He earned his record move to Forest in 1979 and headed the winner in the 1-0 victory over Malmo to win the European Cup just a few months later. Francis missed the European Cup win over Hamburg a year later through injury and joined Manchester City in 1981. Spells at Sampdoria, where he won the Coppa Italia, Atalanta, Rangers and QPR – where he was player-manager – followed. He moved to Sheffield Wednesday in 1990 before he replaced Ron Atkinson as manager. Under Francis, the Owls finished third in the old First Division in his first season in charge before finishing seventh in the newly created Premier League while also being runners up in the FA Cup and League Cup. He left in 1995 and returned to Birmingham the following year, reaching the play-offs three times and also the 2001 League Cup final where they lost to Liverpool. Francis left St Andrew’s in October 2001 and joined Crystal Palace soon after, leaving the Eagles in 2003 in what was his last job. Francis spent half a year in Spain and the rest in Solihull. He suffered a heart attack 11 years ago and had kept himself fit with daily power walks. He had an annual health check through the League Managers’ Association and, according to his spokesman, was “enjoying life very much having eventually got over the death of his wife”. Helen passed away in 2017 after a battle with cancer.

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It feels like every time black holes are discussed and studied by the scientific community, there are new findings that blow our tiny minds. It’s been revealed that black holes actually regurgitate or “burp up” the stars that they eat years after the event. Experts made the discovery by studying tidal disruption events (TDEs). These events take place when stars are close enough to supermassive black holes, to be destroyed by the process of spaghettification. Studying these moments over a number of years after the black holes seemingly swallowing stars with no trace, the experts found that up to 50 per cent of them "burp up" the remains. Yvette Cendes is a research associate at the Havard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and head author on the study. Speaking to Live Science, she said: "If you look years later, a very, very large fraction of these black holes that don’t have radio emission at these early times will actually suddenly 'turn on' in radio waves. "I call it a 'burp' because we’re having some sort of delay where this material is not coming out of the accretion disk until much later than people were anticipating." The material was re-emitted between two and six years from 10 out of 24 black holes which were studied by Cendes and the team. It has the potential to change the way the scientific community thinks about black holes. "There was a second peak, the two black holes re-brightened, and that's completely new and unexpected," Cendes said. "People were thinking that you'd have one outflow, and then it's kind of done. So this observation means these black holes can 'turn on' and then 'turn on' again." Meanwhile, a low intergalactic grumbling is emanating from deep space, according to scientists – and again, it’s black holes that are providing us with new discoveries. Astronomers say they detected the first-of-their-kind low frequency ripples, described as a “cosmic bass note” of gravitational waves, which is thought to be caused by supermassive black holes merging across the universe. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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