Women 1st Team – Head Coach Season Review
This season has been our most successful so far in my time here. I believe it is the first time the women’s first team has won the top league in Scotland. We went into the season with aspirations of winning the league and the Scottish cup. The British cup is always an experience are you are going into the unknown a lot with that. After a fantastic preseason and give it a go we had 6 new players in the first team and 1 move up from the second team.
Having played 3 preseason friendlies, we started with 4 out of our first 5 games away from home. In that time we played all teams in our league and a 5-1 win away to Glasgow was probably the highlight. At the halfway point we were sitting top having played 5 won 5. We knew we had to remain focussed for the final 3 games of semester 1 in which we had one league game, a British cup match and a Scottish cup match. We beat Stirling in the league and then faced Leeds at home in the British cup. This was a match the girls really looked forward to having done so well in the league up to that point. They won 3-1 having been 3-0 up after 20 mins. We then finished semester 1 with a win at home to Edinburgh 3s in the Scottish cup.
Semester 2 started with a win against Edinburgh 2s at peffermill. We then faced Birmingham at home in the British cup. They were a top team a despite being 2-2 at half time we ended up losing 4-2 against the team that got to the final and had a chance to win it. We won the remaining league games and clinched the league with a game to spare against Abertay in a convincing 12-1 win. We completed the league season with a win at home to Glasgow to complete the perfect season of playing 10 won 10. We then had the semi final of the Scottish cup against Edinburgh 1s. We managed to beat them 1-0 to reach the final after so many near misses in the past at the semi final stage. Just as we were looking forward to the final and playoffs to get promoted to prem north the corona virus came and football rightly stopped amongst health concerns.
Highlights of the season were winning every game in the league, beating Leeds 3-1, but in particular beating Edinburgh 1-0 to reach the final. Going forward to next season we need to build upon this season and maintain our standards both on and off the park. The main thing of why we done well was the girls consistently wanting to improve and doing so many more extra video sessions and pitch sessions both individually and as group units.
Graeme Hart
Women 1st Team Head Coach
