Rosie Livingstone and Kathleen McGovern both scored twice at Meadowbank Stadium yesterday as Hibernian Women began their title defence with a convincing 5-1 win over Aberdeen on the opening day of the 2025/26 ScottishPower Women’s Premier League season. 

Two goals from both Rosie Livingstone and Kathleen McGovern plus an own goal secured Hibs a dominant victory to kick-off the new campaign. 

“It was a very positive performance today,” Coach Stewart Hall told Hibs TV. “First half I thought we started really well. 

“Rosie Livingstone’s two goals in the first 15 minutes were great, I think that set the tone for us in the first half as well. 

“I’m ecstatic. Happy to get three points. In terms of us now defending the title, we’re just treating it like we did last season, we need to go game-by-game, we can’t be thinking too far ahead of ourselves. 

“We literally need to focus on the next game that comes up. Today we took care of that and we got our three points. 

“Aberdeen changed shape in the second half, so it took us a wee bit to get used to that, so credit to them. 

“They changed something up to try and get themselves back in the game. 

“But I think once we figured that out, we were back on top, and we were more dominant in possession, which is good, we’ve worked a lot on that. 

“We looked like we were going to always score a goal when we’re going forward, and that’s probably our only grievance today, is that we could have maybe scored one or two more, or created one or two more chances. But we’re happy. 

Hall also touched on two forward players who had significant moments during the game, namely debutant Tiree Burchill and double-scorer Livingstone. 

“It was great to get Tiree on for her first competitive minutes for us, that is really good. 

“And I’m ecstatic for Rosie, she’s worked a lot after coming through a lot of injuries last year, and you can tell that she’s worked hard during pre-season, and she started pre-season well. 

“She started excellently today, so it’s now on her to keep that up, and to keep that level of performance up, and maintain that for the foreseeable future.” 

Livingstone added: “It was a hard team to come up against Aberdeen and it couldn’t have gone better. 

“We scored five goals in the end and conceded one, so we’ve got to still go back and analyse that one and see where we went wrong. But it was definitely a very positive start to the season. 

“It’s been actually really nice, I’ve not had a pre-season for the past two years just due to injuries,” Livingstone added. “It was like a clean slate. 

“The chance to play in pre-season is a perfect opportunity to just build those relationships that I tried to last year, as it was probably more of an impact sub situation that I was last year. 

“I tried my best to contribute as much as I could but this year I really want to start strong and on the front foot, so hopefully I can just stay consistent with it, I think that’s my my main focus.” 

Following a superb start to the campaign for Rosie and the girls, next up is a trip to Springburn to take on Partick Thistle at Petershill Park. 

“Petershill Park is not always the most fun place to go to, but to have that done by the end of next week will be nice. 

“Hopefully it’s a positive result from us to lead us into a nice wee week away for the Champions League that we’re all really looking forward to. 

“But our focus is still just now on Partick Thistle.”