SHELLEY KERR will name her squad for the Euro qualifiers against Albania and Finland on Tuesday – the latter, in Helsinki on October 27, being one of the pivotal Group E games.
All of the September group matches were postponed, so second seeds Finland remain top with 10 points from a possible 12. Top seeds Scotland have six points from two games, while Portugal have four from two.
It is, to put it mildly, far from ideal that Kerr’s domestic players will have had only one Scottish Building Society SWPL1 game in which to sharpen up before the double header. That might be manageable for the first match against Albania at Tynecastle, but is no preparation for a Finnish side whose players will have been back in action for much longer.
Fortunately for the head coach most of her first-choice personnel are with English clubs. In this context it was a remarkable accolade that three of the four FA Cup semi-final captains in midweek were Scottish – Lucy Graham (Everton), Christie Murray (Birmingham City) and Kim Little (Arsenal).
Following wins for Everton and Manchester City, only Graham will have the honour of leading her side out at Wembley on November 1. However, yet another Scotland midfielder, Caroline Weir, will be bidding to add a third FA Cup winners’ medal to those won with Arsenal in 2014 when Kerr was manager, and last year with City.
WHEN Sarah Teegarden limped out of Celtic’s League Cup tie against Spartans on March 1, the 25-year-old from southern California had no inkling it would be her last competitive game of 2020.
What the midfielder assumed had been a non-contact calf injury was found to be an anterior cruciate ligament rupture. A bad situation then worsened when non-essential surgeries in Scotland were halted to free up hospitals for the expected deluge of Covid-19 cases.
The necessary remedial work was finally carried out two months later, but only thanks to the intervention of a doctor back in the United States. Teegarden, who is engaged to Dundee United midfielder Ian Harkes, takes up the story.
“Ian is from Washington DC and his family are good friends with an orthopaedic surgeon there. When he heard I hadn’t been able to have my operation he said if you can get over we can help you out. So, after getting a Covid test, I was able to have surgery on May 1.”
Teegarden is now back in light training with Celtic, but still faces a lengthy wait before she will be back playing.
“On Thursday it was five months since the operation,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be playing again this year. Although everything is possible, you don’t want to rush this – my goal is to be back in the second half of the season.
“You never want to have any big injury, but if there was ever a time to have one that was it. I still haven’t missed a single game to this point, and the change to a winter season really helps me out.”
It has been a start-stop experience in Scotland for Teegarden. The box-to-box player began training with Celtic last summer after moving from French top division club Lille to be with Hawkes – but then had to wait until the club went professional before signing for them.
Teegarden, who has also played for North Carolina Courage and Swedish side Kopparbergs Goteborg, is, like her partner, unhappy at how divided a country the United States has become under Donald Trump. Along with other members of Hawkes’ family, the couple attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington after the killing of George Floyd, and both will use their postal votes in the hope of change at next month’s Presidential election.
Trump’s refusal to confirm he would relinquish office if beaten was a new low and Teegarden admitted: “It’s rather scary, to be honest. We can’t be too surprised by anything Trump does now, unfortunately, but it would be shocking if that was the case. USA politics have always been polarised, but his rhetoric makes it even more extreme. The good thing is it can be healed. We are a patriotic country and people just need to listen to one another and find common ground.”
ALL going well the new SWPL season will start in a fortnight. As things stand, and thanks to some hard lobbying behind the scenes, the two top divisions have been confirmed as elite leagues and a minimum of 51 people can be at games. Live television and streams will also be permitted.
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