Boroughmuir Thistle – defeat on day one of the SWPL season

Boroughmuir Thistle lose to Glasgow Women on opening day of the Scottish Women’s Premier League (SWPL) season. 

Boroughmuir Thistle FC manager, Andy Enwood, said he is “extremely disappointed” after his team lost 2-1 against Glasgow Women FC at Meadowbank Stadium on Sunday afternoon in the club’s first match of the 2023/24 SWPL 2 season. 

It was a slow start to proceedings in Edinburgh as both teams settled into what would be a very tough challenge with both sides likely to be battling for promotion. 

Thistle opened the scoring in the 21^st minute. After some fantastic build-up play just outside the Glasgow penalty box, Beth MacLeod was given the ball on the left-hand side of the box. Beth drove into the box and hit a perfect strike into the top corner of the net.

Ten minutes later Glasgow Women’s pressure told as they stole the ball from Thistle inside Boroughmuir’s penalty area and slotted the ball past goalkeeper Beth Rennie to level the game ahead of half-time. 

Buoyed by the home crowds support, Thistle came flying out of the blocks in the second half as MacLeod looked to restore her team’s lead with a powerful strike, but a good save from the Glasgow keeper kept her side in the contest. 

In the 69^th minute, Glasgow took the lead after a long free-kick allowed the visitors to complete their comeback against the home side. 

Despite being behind, Thistle weren’t going to give up on getting something from this game. With 6 minutes of the 90 left to play, Boroughmuir crowded into the Glasgow box ahead of a cross. Substitute Molly Orr-Love hit the ball on the volley, but her effort flashed just wide of the post. 

Speaking after the match, manager, Andy Enwood, said: “We are obviously extremely disappointed with the result, but I’m not disappointed with the overall performance. 

“I think today, we’ve been done by real fine margins, we made an error at the back and we’ve conceded a long-range free-kick, apart from that Glasgow weren’t really near our goal and that was down to our positioning, that was down to our work-rate, that was down to our play.”

Andy went on to say: “Overall it is absolute disappointment to lose any game, especially the first game of the season, but we will get into training next week and we will be ready for Kilmarnock next week.”