THE first of two games which will define the domestic season kicks off at 1pm today when Hibernian host Glasgow City in a probable SBS SWPL1 title decider.
The equation is straightforward. A win for City will bring them a record 11th successive title. A draw will all but ensure it. Should Hibs win they will go one point clear – and then lift their first title since 2007 if they beat Spartans next Sunday.
Should it be a draw, City would have to win at bottom club Aberdeen, who could be relegated today. They will be deserving champions, but it’s unfortunate for Hibs that their chances have been dented by the last 17 minutes of their game at Rangers last Sunday.
Captain Joelle Murray and Lisa Robertson received double yellow cards during this disastrous spell and are suspended. Robertson can have no complaint about her second yellow, but Murray’s looked to be a complete over-reaction by referee Euan Birch.
Hibs will thus go into the most important game of the league season without four of their best players – Lizzie Arnot, a long-term anterior cruciate ligament casualty, and Lucy Graham, who has suffered a family bereavement, being the other two.
“These are massive blows,” head coach Kevin Milne conceded. “But we’ve got hungry players who are really determined to put in a performance and prove that over the course of the season they are the better team.”
Milne also pointed out that Hibs beat City 1-0 after extra-time in the semi-final of the League Cup without Murray, Robertson and Arnot starting.
That result confirms a curious trend in results between the sides over the last two years. Ominously for today’s home side, City don’t lose league games when they meet; but they have been beaten in the last three cup ties, including two finals, even if two of them went to extra-time and the other was decided by an Arnot goal deep in injury time.
City travel to Edinburgh with a phenomenal defensive record. They have conceded just four goals in 19 league games with the last of them being in May, when they beat Hamilton 3-1. They will be favourites to make it 11-in-a-row today and deny Hibs the treble with the sides meeting again in the SSE Scottish Women’s Cup final in a fortnight, but it’s going to be intriguing.
THURSDAY is when Denmark will learn their fate following their failure to play a 2019 World Cup qualifier against Sweden in Gothenburg on October 20.
The Danish Football Association (DBU) have been charged by Uefa with Refusal to Play. The DBU blamed a dispute with the players for the cancellation, while the players blame the association.
It will be interesting to see what Uefa decide. When illness prevented the Scotland Under-19 team from playing a Euro qualifying group game against Serbia last year, the SFA were hit with a similar Refusal to Play charge and the Serbs awarded a 3-0 win.
If that was the punishment meted out to a team of teenage girls for falling victim to gastroenteritis, what sanction awaits the Danes? Their cancellation seems to have been altogether more avoidable.
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