JO Love loves football. There can be no other reason for the 31-year-old continuing to push herself through an exhausting fitness and work routine.

Even now, when she has been given leave from the day job at Glasgow Scientific Services until after the Euros, she admits her body and mind are still in treadmill mode. Little wonder after a regime of rising at 6am for strength and conditioning sessions, hitting the office at 9am, and then, after work, heading for Glasgow City’s evening training sessions.

Brought up in Kilbirnie, Love’s introduction to football was with boys from her street. One had an aunt who ran a girls’ team in Largs, and so it all began for Scotland’s most capped outfield player of all time.

The first of a remarkable 175 Scotland appearances was in 2002, and her first goal followed two years later, against France. At the time she was playing for her first senior club, Kilmarnock; spells with Doncaster Rovers Belles and Celtic followed before she pitched up at Glasgow City in 2011. She also managed to squeeze in two summers playing in Florida for a club called Cocoa Expos.

“My family,” she says of are her biggest football influences. “They have literally driven me the length and breadth of the country and are still my biggest fans to this day. They’re coming to Holland (for the Euros).”

Like many women footballers, Love has been round the houses positionally. So what is her favourite?

“I started off playing up front, then No 10, for Scotland,” she says. “I really enjoyed being an attacking midfielder when I had the legs.

“I don’t really regard myself as a wide player. Anywhere down the middle. Whether it’s the age or the experience it’s a bit deeper now, and I tend to be more of a sitting midfielder.”

Love has an unusual, and interesting, job. “I’m a consumer protection analyst,” she says. “We test stuff like toys, petrols, diesels, candles and cosmetics. They’re usually sent to us by Trading Standards.”

Highlights of a fulfilling career include Glasgow City reaching the quarter-finals of the women’s Champions League in 2014-15, and, of course, reaching the Euros.

“It will be something different for us all – another level again,” says Love, who admits she didn’t see her 175 caps coming. “Sometimes I don’t even believe it. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been around for as long as the number suggests. But it’s great – just to have one cap was all I ever wanted.

“People are now expecting me to push on and get up to the 200 mark but that probably won’t be up to me.

“I’ll do what my body tells me, but if possible I would like to play in the next World Cup campaign.”

And when the curtain does eventually fall?

“Some nice holidays and some downtime,” she says. “Just be normal I guess.”