Hibernian Women coach Stewart Hall was delighted with the ‘brilliant’ performance of the side that sealed a 5-0 victory over Montrose in the SWPL yesterday.
Returning from Milan following the Europa Cup first qualifying round first leg against Internazionale on Thursday, the players had a short turnaround to get ready for a tough test against Craig Feroz’s side.
The visitors dug deep to keep Hibs within a one-goal deficit until the second half, until the floodgates opened – with Linzi Taylor and Kirsty Morrison joining Kathleen McGovern, who netted three times, on the score sheet.
“We were pretty much in control of the game without dominating it,” Hall told Hibs TV. “Credit to the girls, they kept doing the right things, they moved the ball correctly.
“We did create opportunities and I think if we’d taken one or two of those opportunities sooner in the game in the first half, I think the first half would have opened up for us and we would have been more dominant than what we were.
“But then you can see second half, as soon as we got the first two goals early, we fixed a couple of the wee things we talked about at half-time. The girls were brilliant, honestly, really, really good.”
Two players in the squad had even less time to prepare themselves for action, as Irish duo Jess Fitzgerald and Scarlett Herron joined up with their new teammates on Friday afternoon at HTC.
The young talents are not the only new faces in the building, with midfielder Milly Boughton only joining the Hibees last week. All three appeared off the bench against Montrose, earning praise from Hall for their impact to date.
“Milly has gone from strength to strength since coming in, you can see she’s now starting to adapt to the pace of the game. She’s young, she’ll be a good signing once she gets fully up to speed, gets her confidence up, and really puts a footmark on the team and challenges for it.
“Jess and Scarlett, a little bit shorter time they’ve had, but you can see when they both came in that they both have experience at first team level. Scarlett came in and was very solid in the centre-half position, and as for Jess you can see that she’s going to add something else to her midfield dynamic and she’s going to provide a wee bit of some change.
“We are all really excited, buzzing to have all three of them in and hit the ground running and add to the performance today.”
Europa Cup action at Easter Road Stadium awaits Hibs Women on Wednesday (17 September) evening, as the girls take on Inter Milan in the second leg of their first qualifying round tie.
“We’re all excited,” Hall admitted. “We are all happy to be at Easter Road for the Europa Cup and to face a team like Inter Milan. I think everybody as a youngster would dream about that.
“But we’re just going to treat it like any other game, there are 11 bodies on the pitch, we now just need to set up our tactics and get it right. The squad’s looking a little bit better than what it was out in Milan so we’re excited for that.
“It’s now all about us. We need to recover properly today and tomorrow, we need to get ourselves back on the training pitch on Tuesday and then get ourselves to Easter Road on Wednesday to go and put on a performance that hopefully we can do the fans proud, and hopefully they can come out on their numbers to come and support us.”
