Up at 3am: World Cup players in losing battle with jet lag

SYDNEY: Every long-distance flyer knows how debilitating jet lag can be, but now imagine you need to train right away and then play in a football World Cup.

Even the stars of the Women's World Cup are not immune to the dreaded jet lag, so teams flying over to Australia and New Zealand have come up with a variety of ways - some novel, others less so - to try to combat it.

"Time for the chrono glasses. Doing our best to beat the jet lag," European champions England tweeted prior to their more than 16,000km, 22-hour slog to Australia. At least they were in business.

The smiling players were pictured wearing futuristic-looking glasses with orange lenses.

The shades were light glasses designed by the Dutch-based company Propeaq and designed to trick the eyes to encourage or discourage sleep.

The Lionesses had a pre-tournament briefing on how to combat jet lag, including what steps to take before flying halfway across the globe to Australia, according to The Times.

Teams flying off for the World Cup have come up with their own methods in an effort to get their players on the training pitch and raring to go as soon as possible after touching down.

Ireland's Dutch coach Vera Pauw came up with a "jet-lag protocol".

With the Irish playing on the opening day of the World Cup on Thursday, against co-hosts Australia, they had no time to lose.

The Irish squad initially trained according to their Irish body clocks, before gradually moving the sessions towards Australian time, according to the Irish Mirror.

"We started at 11 in the middle of our night, then 12, then 2, now at 4 and then tomorrow at 6," Pauw was quoted as saying.

"And there are also light glasses, but the doctor showed there is no evidence and we want to just keep things simple,"