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However Their Season Ends, This Was The Year That Celtic’s Women Got Us All Talking.

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And so it goes to the final day.

We’ve beaten Hearts a couple of times this season by wide margins. With the title up for grabs I think we’re in good shape to do it again. Ibrox’s big win today has put them right in it … but they have the harder game and they will not so easily sweep aside a Glasgow City team who in spite of being financially outgunned by both clubs are an outstanding side.

Glasgow City are still the title favourites. But it’s slight.

We’ve done our job. Other people should do theirs better.

When Glasgow City game was poised at 1-1 today the BBC ludicrously suggested that “the title right now belongs to (Ibrox.)” I find their arrogance almost incomprehensible.

There is one more round of games to go.

If Glasgow City win against the Sevconuts, obviously we’ll have fought the good fight but come up short.

As long as we win there’s a sure-fire Champions League place for us.

The title … well, a draw and we’d be there.

A win for the Ibrox club and on Goals Scored we’d only need to better their score by one.

What a season it’s been for them.

The Celtic Women’s team has been around since 2007.

Most folk don’t realise that. This is not a new thing.

What is new is that they’ve been a full-time team only since January 2020. Since then, the profile of the team has taken off. Last week, 10,000 fans turned up to watch them in a game at Celtic Park.

This has been a stellar year for the women.

With an adventurous, charismatic coach at the helm, in Fran Alonso, the profile of their team has just grown and grown. This season has seen a steady increase in the TV coverage and sponsorship. New signings from far-flung corners of the globe have come in. New training facilities have been made available. And the blogs are doing more to promote them.

My own journey towards doing more to cover them has finally come full circle. I write about Celtic all day, but my focus has always been on the men’s first team, our place in the world and the many forces arrayed against us and trying to stop us.

But Celtic is an ever evolving institution, and it is high time that this site had a dedicated women’s writer and that we paid proper attention to what’s going on here, because it’s huge and it’s massive for everyone concerned.

Which is all of us.

There’ll be teething issues. (Like with VAR haha.)

Some of us are hopelessly uneducated about the history of the women’s team and are playing catch-up and trying to learn as we go. So bear with us a little bit as we try to do this right. In the end, I want this site to do it and do it well. Some blogs – like The Celtic Star and the Cynic – have been doing this for a while, and they are the standard the rest of us have to aspire to meet.

But I’ll tell you, the women’s team makes it easy to stay interested.

They play fabulous attacking football.

They are outstanding ambassadors for the club.

Most importantly, perhaps, they are responsible for introducing football, in a very real sense, to a lot of girls out there who might never have thought they had a “place” in the sport.

And I mean that in the most literal sense. A genuine “place”, not just seats in the stands.

These women are shattering glass ceilings everywhere they go.

They are making it so that the girls who follow our club can aspire to more than just cheering on the side. For the first time, they can look at the players as genuine role models and aspire to one day take their place in the team. They say every boy who grows up following Celtic has dreamed about playing for the club … now the girls can do the same.

That’s extraordinary. Game changing.

That’s new and exciting and brilliant for our female fans.

We have a long way to go in Scotland before the women’s game catches fire the way it has in England; the success of their national team has been a huge part of that, of course, and that’s the next evolution that our own setup has to make … but Celtic are certainly going to do our part to improve the chances of that, and going full time has dividends for Scotland as well as for the club itself.

Hopefully we’ll get the credit we deserve for that.

Regular exposure to the Women’s Champions League is another thing, and that too is a critically important element in how we move forward. Win against Hearts and we’ve got that to look forward to, and whilst the league race is going to the wire this is a season where the overall growth and development of the team is such that nobody should be disheartened.

On the contrary, we should take confidence from everything that’s happened, lick our wounds, regroup over the summer and go again in the next campaign.

And you know what? That’s going to be a cracker.

With the fans getting increasingly behind them and their profile now sky-high, there are only good things to come from the women’s side. What’s obvious enough is that they’ve done Celtic proud already.

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10 comments

  • Drew says:

    Get the last game at Celtic Park and let’s fill it and give the ghirls the support they deserve.

  • Henriksgoldenboot says:

    I don’t take any interest in the women’s game at all. I am wise to what it really is. It is nothing but the next big marketing opportunity. And I’m not talking about our club btw. I mean worldwide.

    I have yet to be captured by a game involving the women. The games I’ve watched have been nothing more than higher end amateur level and this includes watching the Euros.

    Let’s not kid ourselves on here. The women’s game has been going for almost 30 years as a proper competition and it is at its peak in relation to quality and skill wise. It’s about the money. And the next opportunity to make some. It’s money they certainly won’t get from me.

    My fear is, and I certainly don’t think we’re far away from it due to the woke brigade is that we’ll be soon forced to watch blended teams as it becomes the next “fad” and that for me will signal the death knell for football as we know it.

    • LadyGreybush says:

      Brother Walfrid was as woke as it gets. You might want to look in the mirror and decide what kind of person you actually are. Celtic are a woke club. Get a dictionary.

      • Henriksgoldenboot says:

        Brother Walfrid would be turning in his grave at the state of the world today and the sins being committed, that’s for sure!

    • Henriksgoldenboot says:

      Well SOG. You have managed to turn my post into something it certainly was not, framed it as some sort of attack on women. Tantamount to putting words in to my mouth. And at the same time launching a personal attack on myself.

      Just to give you a bit of a personal background to myself. I grew up in a single parent family SOG, with my two wonderful sisters and my mother (who incidentally frequently comments that football and rugby are games that women should not be playing). A woman who toiled with multiple jobs to give us the best she could, a person who taught me and my sisters women can achieve anything they put their minds to despite the forces of society being predominantly against them. This in turn inspired my sisters to achieve well beyond expectations. Three women I have the utmost respect for. The same respect I have for every woman and girl who chooses to chase their dreams of playing football. Be it in the hoops or whatever. So hopefully that takes care of the misogyny accusation.

      As for my “ignorance” you sound like a person who understands marketing, trading etc my friend. My ignorance has led me to possibly look at a bigger picture than yourself, and instead of seeing ” market forces” I understand it to be more like “forcing the market”. Which is what big corporations do when they want the general public to focus on and buy into their latest products, which is exactly what is happening with ladies football right now,.the product of choice, called creating the demand, but hey maybe I’m being a little ignorant and you already knew this.

      And that’s the point I’m getting at which I fear you.have missed. Where does this stop. Say you have a little family who attend Celtic park every week to see the Bhoys and in this family there’s Mum and Dad two brothers and a little sister who have been going for a few years. Then all of a sudden little sister wants to go and start watching the ladies team. This putting extra stress on the families finances because they have to travel to extra games, pay for extra tickets etc.

      So take the rose tinted glasses off. This isn’t about leveling up, this isn’t about equality, because I’ll tell you now, the two will never be equal because the ladies game just cannot reach the level of the men’s game because physically it can’t. And why would you pay the same money to watch an inferior product? Because that’s what it will eventually come to also levelling up salaries because that what it boils down to in the modern game. Money.

      Which brings me nicely on to the final point of your wizened statement above, All football was NEVER created to make money. The game originated as a fun past time. It was then taken on a level to help communities and charities ( our own beloved club as an example)before the corporate world got its teeth into it and turned it into the grotesque money pit it is now. But hey I’m probably being ignorant and you already knew that. Thank you for you comment SOG. God bless.

  • Stesano says:

    Get last game at Paradise!! Tho I see ” o f FC ‘ are doing so as they are totally obsessed with our great Club!! Can’t blame the halfwits tho eh as serial winners will always have admiring glances from serial losers ha ha well underneath the perma rage that all orcs have as well as poison, sectarian hate, racism it’s all in the daily life of a hun eh

  • Henriksgoldenboot says:

    James. Have you gone so far left you have taken to communism? Are we only allowed to post those views which are in keeping with your own views or there abouts? Like an iron curtain dictator.

    I sent a post earlier with my open and honest views on the women’s game which you seem to have chosen to moderate and discard. Very valid points and non offensive. Can you elaborate as to why? I thought you believed in free speech? GRMA.

    • James Forrest says:

      You wanted your comments posted, you got it.

      I think your first point is reprehensible. Your second is just idiotic.

      • Henriksgoldenboot says:

        I’ll start with my second point first, was that a bit close to the bone?

        And what was so reprehensible with regards to my first point? I’m merely stating my opinion. An opinion that is shared with a number of people within my own circle. Is there anything you wish to challenge in it and we can discuss? I have no problem with those that take part in, run, contribute etc to the woman’s game. But I will stand by my views on what is happening with it and why. Thank you for posting BTW. Very much appreciated.

  • Frank says:

    James calm down. We all need to take a pause and listen to pundit from Sky. “Its a man’s game” Gawd he made Boyd sound intelligent when he came out with that comment. Has he actually watched the woman’s game. The skills on show are first class

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