Grant Scott has spoken of his excitement as pre-season gets underway for Hibs Women ahead of a fresh SWPL campaign.
A handful of friendlies and an intensive six-day training camp in Spain precedes an opening day trip to Petershill Park to take on Partick Thistle.
The Head Coach sat down with Hibs TV to discuss the busy weeks ahead, as well as how the squad are shaping up following a flurry of incomings and outgoings over the summer break.
“It’s great to be back first and foremost, to be back in amongst the environment and the squad.”
“We’ve started really well. The girls are working really hard already. I’m just delighted to see everyone and have some new, and some old, faces in the door.
“It’s a great environment and I find it quite important for the players to get on and express themselves. We’ve got a good dynamic here.
"The new players have brought along their own mentalities to the group. We’ll learn from them as much as they learn from us.”
Keen to experiment with his new-look Hibees team, Scott is looking forward to taking on SWPL2 outfit Boroughmuir Thistle in the girls’ first pre-season friendly at Meadowbank Stadium on Sunday, 12 July.
“We’ll have had a couple weeks of hard work by then. Then it’s just about allowing the players that stimulus of being back on the pitch again.
“We will rotate the squad and it’ll be a mixed up XI at times. We are looking forward to the match. We will be rusty but it’ll be good to have everyone involved.”
The squad will then spend just shy of a week in the Spanish city of Alicante for a warm-weather training camp.
“These trips are always good for the team bond,” Scott says. “You go away together and you’re stuck together 24/7; you get to know each other so well and how to manage each other.
“It’s a good time to get the hours together, to develop these relationships and to keep forming the environment that we want here.”
With an away trip to take on Brian Graham’s Partick Thistle on 11 August kicking off the league season, Scott is eager to get underway competitively.
“There’s not any easy games. The first game against Thistle — a team that took a lot of points from us last season — is a difficult start. But they’ll be a new team and we’ll be a new team.
“We want the competition, we want to do well, and we want to do better than last year. When you get those fixtures in, the excitement builds.”
