Utility man Eric Dier: It's been a 'crazy' year with England

After a whirlwind international rise, Eric Dier says he's enjoying every minute of his England journey.

The 22 year-old only made his Three Lions debut last November, but has been an ever-present in the squad ever since.

The Tottenham Hotspur man faced the media this week as attentions turned from last weekend's victory over Turkey onto Friday's clash with Australia in Sunderland.

And, while refuting any suggestion that his place in Roy Hodgson's final squad for EURO 2016 is nailed-down, Dier says he's loving life with the Three Lions.

"I wouldn't call myself a key member!" he laughed. "It's been a crazy 12 months for me.

"If you'd told me 12 months ago that I'd be sitting in this position right now, I'd think you were crazy. I'm really enjoying every minute of it and I'm looking forward to hopefully repaying the faith the manager's put in me."

Friday's game in Sunderland could well bring about a debut for another youngster, with 18-year-old Marcus Rashford joining up with the squad this week.

And Dier says the Manchester United striker deserves his chance with the Three Lions: "It's a bit of a fairytale, isn't it?

"It's brilliant for English football and brilliant for him. I'm really, really happy for him that he's here with us and hopefully we can look after him and not put too much pressure on him so he can do what he's been doing for his club here with us.

"If you're good enough, you're old enough. I think he fully deserves all of the credit he's getting at the moment.

"It's been an unbelievable few months for him and hopefully he can continue what he's been doing and to keep improving. Hopefully that'll be great for us."

Rashford is one of eight players who were not available for the Turkey game due to Manchester United and Liverpool being involved in the Emirates FA Cup and UEFA Europa League finals respectively.

Eric Dier in training ahead of England's clash with Australia

All eight have now joined up ahead of tomorrow's game at the Stadium of Light, and Dier is enjoying having the full squad in camp.

"It's really nice now that the whole group's together," he said. "We'd already been working for a couple of days but now we're looking forward to working together as one big group to improve on those things from the Turkey game going into the next two games.

"It's obviously always nice to get off to a winning start and that's the most important thing, but we've only been together for a short period of time so far and there's a lot we can still improve on and that we are looking to improve on during the next couple of weeks before we get on the plane [to France].

"We've still got two more friendlies to go before we go over there, and we're going to look to improve in both of them. We'll just go over there and give 110% in every game because I think that's what every England football fan wants to see: a team that gives everything and leaves everything out there, so I hope that we do that."