Summer football, eh?
Hearts’ opener against Aberdeen was touch and go at one point this week at Tynecastle with the swirling wind calling off the Edinburgh tattoo for the first time in 75 years and train timetables significantly disrupted.
Spare a thought for Hibs women, though. Not only did they find themselves battered by storms and their pre-season plans unsettled but they headed all the way to the States to find themselves sidelined.
Grant Scott’s side were invited to play in Jacksonville only for thunderstorms to deny them the chance to take to the pitch in a pre-season warm-up.
With the SWPL just a week away from kicking off – and Hibs and Glasgow City both facing up to European qualifiers at the end of this month – it will have been frustrating for Scott to have travelled so far to not quite get what he was looking for.
He will be hoping, however, that these are the only storms that he has to deal with this season.
Certainly, the SWPL looks as intriguing as ever when it comes to a competitive fight for the title.
Leanne Crichton will look to get her feet under the desk as soon as possible at Rangers and there has been no soft footing around what she knows she has to do.
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The former Scotland internationalist, who twice played with City at UEFA Champions League quarter-final stages, is well aware that delivering the title to Ibrox is the only real barometer on which she will be judged.
It eluded Jo Potter across two seasons with a domestic treble just tantalisingly out of reach for the former Lioness. Key to any success will lie in changing the mentality within a squad that has underperformed across recent campaigns.
Crichton checked into Rangers this week with her first task to see a Sunderland side comfortably beat her team at Broadwood. She will be well aware of what she has lost this summer with six players away and an opening game of the season looming with a trek to Montrose next Sunday to kick it all off.
There will be immediate pressure heading into the dug-out as she faces up against Glasgow City, Celtic and Hibs for the championship.
What has been notable across the last few weeks is that every team’s preparations appear to have been unsettled.
City will not have countenanced an offer for Rangers coming in for their assistant manager as they zoned in on a new campaign getting underway.
Celtic have been all over the place this summer with ten players away and only a couple in the door; pre-season games have been few and performances entirely unconvincing.
Elena Sadiku missed the beginning of pre-season as she worked as a pundit for Swedish TV at the Euros. There remains time for Celtic to get players in the door but there is a strong suspicion that right now their hand is nowhere near strong enough to go and genuinely challenge for the title.
Rangers have lost key players and have a new manager who missed the pre-season camp in Italy as a compensation agreement held up the switch. Hibs headed Stateside to find their game washed out.
What it all adds up to when the season properly gets underway will be interesting.
Hibs and City have the mini tournament qualifier to prepare for too. These games offer a pathway into the Champions League but they are also expensive for clubs to cope with both in a financial sense and also in what they can take out of the squad.
AND ANOTHER THING
Caroline Weir has made a career out of breaking new ground but a placing on this year’s prestigious Ballon d’Or Féminin an extraordinary personal accolade for the Scotland and Real Madrid midfielder.
The first Scottish female to make a shortlist which was first published in 2018, Weir’s inclusion is all the more impressive given that it comes in a season where she has just recovered from an ACL injury.
She finds herself rubbing shoulders with a who’s who of elite women’s football. Crucially, it is the environment in which she has always wanted to be.
When Weir headed to Spain to join Real Madrid, she offered a very simple explanation for the switch; ‘I want to become one of the best players in the world.’
It was not just hyperbole.
Scott McTominay’s influence has been extraordinary for Steve Clarke’s side across recent campaigns while Weir has been one of few positives for the women’s side.
As Melissa Andreatta looks to this autumn’s World Cup qualifiers she will be keen to harness all of those qualities as Scotland look to make it onto the plane to Brazil.
AND FINALLY
This week’s revelations regarding live SWPL games that will be screened on BBC Alba did not bring too many surprises.
The first Edinburgh derby will be shown live as Hearts host reigning champions Hibs.
BBC Alba will also broadcast Aberdeen v Celtic live on Sunday 14 September, and the following weekend will see Elena Sadiku's side host title winners Hibs on Sunday 21 September, followed by Rangers v Glasgow City on Sunday 28 September.
The latter, of course, will be particularly intriguing given that it will see Leanne Crichton come up against her old team but for the likes of Hamilton Accies, there is a decent wait before they find themselves getting any kind of TV exposure.
