Fresh from crushing Stonehaven 20-0, Caley Thistle women’s boss Karen Mason expects her team will be tested more against the Championship North’s basement side Dundee West this weekend.
The Inverness players bounced back from a potentially promotion-damaging 3-1 loss against Dryburgh Athletic with the rout against Stonehaven, who had not played a league game since an equally-crushing 22-0 loss to East Fife before Christmas.
Struggling Stonehaven have now leaked 106 goals in just 13 games and will be glad to get this season over.
Kirsty Deans led the Inverness scoring crew with eight goals, with Julia Scott not far behind with five.
For Caley Thistle, the convincing outcome means they are six points adrift of joint leaders Montrose and East Fife, although they’ve played two matches more than the former.
ICT now marginally have the second best goal difference in the division, 10 goals less than Montrose and one more than East Fife.
On Sunday, they are home to Dundee West, who despite being bottom of the pack and without a win, have shown signs of danger in their last two matches alone.
Their most recent outing on January 16 saw them score three times against East Fife, albeit in a 10-3 defeat.
They also lost only 2-1 against Grampian in one of their previous games before that in a stop-start period where postponements prevented a chance of momentum.
No ‘walkover’ rout expected this time
When ICT and Dundee West met in Tayside in October, the visitors ran out 7-0 victors. Mason is hoping for another victory – but thinks Dundee will be ‘ready’ to put up a fight.
Mason said: “When we played them down there, it was a tight grass pitch and they were rather physical. They didn’t necessarily like the running side of the game, so we’re hoping at Millburn Academy, it will open up a bit for us.
“They’re definitely a stuffy team and they seem to have a larger squad at the moment, so won’t be coming here with light numbers, which is different from last time.
“They seem to have made some additions, which has bolstered their squad. Hopefully we can still get the three points and put in a strong performance. It won’t be a walkover like last weekend.
“Stonehaven have lost a lot of players, so I don’t think Dundee West will be anything close in comparison. We are preparing for a team ready to come at us.”
Boss Mason – score looks ‘ridiculous’
Looking back at the rousing 20-0 goalfest last Sunday, Mason insists it was vital her players maintained their focus and showed up well in front of goal.
The manager added: “We can only play who is in front of us. We were not going to go there and have a bit of a pass about.
“The fact we scored 20 makes it look ridiculous, but we didn’t travel all that way for no reason. We had a job to do.
“We tried to boost our confidence a little bit and we’ve been struggling with our finishing of late, so it became a bit of a training match for us in a sense and we managed to finish our chances off well.
“We knew they lost by 22 goals against East Fife, so the incentive was there for us. They only had 10 players that day. They had 11 on Sunday.
“We had goal difference on our minds to keep the faint (promotion) hope alive, it gives us a chance. It was a job well done in that sense.”
Caley Thistle will have a competitive squad for Sunday, although Charlie Arrowsmith, Nicola Ross, Lauren Donald and Robyn Evans are unavailable.
