Friday 21st February, 2020 at 2:00pm
Partick Thistle Women’s FC have now had two false starts to their 2020 season with SWPL Cup ties against Motherwell and Forfar Farmington postponed due to travel concerns regarding the weather.
As such, we now kick-off the new competitive year with our opening league game of the SWPL 2 against city rivals, Glasgow Women.
Looking ahead to the clash, we caught up with Jags’ head coach, John Doyle. We began by asking John about the pre-season period, with not much time between the season ending in mid-November and training re-starting in early January.
“The players have done well in training since we came back last month. They’re in good condition and we’ve been pleased with the new faces that have joined along the way. We’ve had almost a full team worth of new signings so it will take some time for them to integrate fully but we’re really pleased with the quality we’ve added.
“When you sign that many players, you have to be patient and understand that it will take time for everyone to gel and get to know each other so that’s something we’re definitely mindful of.”
The team have played a few different shapes behind-closed-doors friendly games recently as part of their preparations and John has been encouraged by what he’s seen.
“We’ve shown signs of where we want the team to be. Naturally, you use these games as an opportunity to experiment with different formations and new players who’ve arrived. We’ve had a few little injury setbacks here and there which has been frustrating for us but playing these games is always useful.”
The Jags have had SWPL Cup fixtures against Motherwell and Forfar Farmington cancelled due to bad weather and related travel safety concerns which Doyle was disappointed by as he feels those two competitive games would have been beneficial for the squad.
“We’d have loved to have played those games but the weather has been awful and it’s disrupted a lot of players from being able to travel to the games so there’s not much we can do about that.
“Glasgow Women have had two great tests against SWPL 1 opposition; narrowly losing to Spartans last week and getting a great draw at Celtic before that so they’ll have been great games for them as they’ve, like us, changed a lot of their playing squad.
“For us, it’ll be difficult. You expect a bit of rust on the first game of the season so we have to make sure we settle into the game as quickly as possible and try to get our foot on the ball.
“One thing that’s for certain is that it will be a really tough opener against a side who have already shown their quality in those two SWPL Cup games and we’ll have to be on form to beat them.”
Kick-off will be 12pm on Sunday at Petershill Park with ticket prices as follows:
Adults – £5
Concessions – £3
Under 16s go FREE
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