I was honoured to reach 150 caps for the Scotland Women’s National Team in our 1-0 Euro 2025 qualifying win over Slovakia at Hampden on Tuesday night.
All of my Scotland caps have felt special – like 150 individual celebrations in their own right – and I do think the magnitude of the achievement will only really hit home once my playing career is over.
My partner Lisa, my mum, dad and auntie were there for the occasion.
At full-time, after Sophie Howard’s second-half header had given us victory, I was asked if I would be going out to celebrate.
My celebration – more a celebration of the win – consisted of one margarita… from a Marks and Spencer pre-mixed can, in our flat. They’re pretty good, though!
I played in midfield during the qualifier, which saw us make it four points from two qualifying games, following what I thought was a tricky trip to Serbia and good clean sheet in drawing 0-0 last Friday.
The coaching staff wanted to get Sam Kerr and Erin Cuthbert a little higher up the pitch against Slovakia, and knew I could be relied upon to sit in front of the defence.
As much as I’ve been a centre-back for a long time now, I’ve played in midfield intermittently all through my career and for my current club Aston Villa, and I do think my better attributes as a player are in possession.
If I was starting my career again now, and could take the years of experience, understanding of positioning and improvements in my fitness (I’m probably fitter now than ever) with me, I’d maybe try to cut it as a midfielder.
Stats over our competitive results have to be taken in context
In the build-up to the game at Hampden, we were aware of the external noise around our form, with people highlighting we had not had a competitive win for 16 months, or eight competitive games, with a general sense of people being underwhelmed with our recent performances and results.
After the match, our head coach Pedro Martinez Losa said the narrative around the team had been “totally manipulated”.
You have got to look at the context of the competitive matches and period of time people have been pointing to.
We didn’t have a competitive game for almost a year during the first part of the 16 months in question after the World Cup play-off loss to Ireland.
We then went in to Nations League Group A with three top nations in England, the Netherlands and Belgium, and we’re a team who haven’t really had experience of regularly playing back-to-back fixtures against the top sides, before having to play six tough matches in a six-month period.
The 6-0 loss and performance against England at home was unacceptable, but we were playing the European champions and World Cup runners-ups’ strongest side as they tried to rack up as many goals as possible.
The 4-0 away defeat in the Netherlands was also poor.
The rest of the Nations League matches where we didn’t win were exactly that: competitive. And in the Belgium matches at the end of last year (both 1-1), I thought we did enough to win them.
We believe Scotland will be at Euros
I do feel we benefitted from the exposure, experience, and the test of playing top nations who also had to perform.
Post-Nations League, it has felt like quite a long wait to get back to playing competitive games regularly with this Euros qualifying campaign and to be able to implement stuff we have been working on in camps and friendly fixtures.
Our aim is to top our Euros qualifying group, and we know one of our key areas for improvement is to be more ruthless in front of goal, which is something which sets the top nations apart.
Though we’ve only managed one goal in this camp, we’ve had a lot of players missing in forward positions.
We have had the likes of Jane Ross and all of her experience, while Lauren Davidson started upfront the other day and is capable of scoring goals despite it not being her natural position.
But two of our biggest contributors upfront – Kirsty Hanson and Martha Thomas – are at the end of their injury rehab and are due back soon, so there will hopefully be a bigger pool available to chose from at the upcoming camp in May, where we play Israel home and away.
Our group remain positive – I’ve never known a squad who are so together.
This translates on to the pitch. We back each other and we’re desperate to get back to a major tournament and believe we can.
Christy Grimshaw will learn so much during knee injury rehab
I’m gutted for my Scotland team-mate, Stonehaven’s Christy Grimshaw, after it was revealed she had suffered serious knee damage playing for her club AC Milan.
Christy, 28, has probably found the best form of her career over the past couple of seasons in Italy and plays a lot of minutes with Milan, so it is shame this has happened now.
This setback will obviously rule her out of national team contention for a significant period, after she had already missed the last camp due to an ankle injury.
❤️🩹🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/IeyVEN9cTK
— christy grimshaw (@christygrimshaw) April 6, 2024
My advice? Get stuck into the rehab.
It is a very difficult injury, both physically and mentally, there’s no getting away from that, and she’ll need support from different people at different times for all of the ups and downs – and it could be harder living overseas.
Hopefully Christy is well looked after by her club, because you can also learn so much during these periods and return better than before.
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