ONCE again Glasgow City’s consistency and professionalism has delivered a league title, their 11th in succession for the stand-alone women’s club. And once again, Scotland’s men’s clubs have been found wanting in relieving City of their superiority.
The eight Scottish Building Society SWPL1 clubs go into today’s final round of fixtures with every meaningful issue resolved. All that could change – and it would be a long shot at that – is that Stirling University and Spartans might swap fourth and fifth places.
There has been talk about how much tougher the competition is becoming in the top flight, but the statistics don’t bear that out. Once the irritating stop-start first half of the season was over, City switched into overdrive and last Sunday were far too good for an understrength and out-of-sorts Hibernian side, winning the title decider 3-0.
The champions head up to relegated Aberdeen today having played 20 games, lost none, and conceded just four goals. New Scotland goalkeeper Lee Alexander and her defence can be proud, but what does it say about the other seven clubs?
The fact the City squad is arguably not as strong as many in the 11-in-a-row sequence is testimony to the continuing strength of character of all concerned. The hunger and desire of captain Leanne Ross exemplifies why the club keeps lifting titles.
City also have experience in abundance. This tells in the big games because Ross, Jo Love and Hayley Lauder have seen and done it all in international and club football. Left-back Nicky Docherty must be knocking on the door of Shelley Kerr’s squad following some powerful performances, while forward Abbi Grant has really upped her game.
City proved wrong those who felt Hibs had the better players this season and would win the league. Nevertheless, the Edinburgh club have been the one credible challenger and mustn’t be judged by one bad performance. They were hit by a combination of issues on the day, but they can still win both cup competitions, as they did last season.
Celtic’s expected challenge again disappointingly failed to materialise. And although Rangers improved significantly after Amy McDonald was appointed head coach, the fact it took six months to replace Kevin Murphy sums up the disinterested manner in which the men’s clubs treat their women’s teams.
Uefa have acted fairly and reasonably in awarding Sweden a 3-0 win following Denmark's “Refusal to Play” a 2019 World Cup qualifier in Gothenburg two months ago.
They also fined the DBU £18,000 and put the association on probation for the next four years. Any further cancellations will result in the Danes being excluded from Uefa tournaments.
As Thursday's sanction could have included being thrown out of World Cup qualifying, this was a result of sorts for the DBU and the players. Yet it also hits the Euro 2017 finalists where it hurts - they will now be hard pressed to win Group 4 and claim the one qualifying place.
My gut instinct is always to side with the players in disputes with associations, as making a stand is often the only way to improve their conditions. However, associations and/or players simply cannot be allowed to cancel qualifying games because of internal disputes.
FINALLY, the more Scotland players who are playing at the highest levels the better, so it is good to see four will be in the Champions League quarter-finals. Chelsea's Erin Cuthbert was joined on Thursday night by Jen Beattie, Claire Emslie and Jane Ross of Manchester City.
The draw for the last eight is on Friday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here