Kirsty Maclean reflects on the whirlwind year

The 19-year-old midfielder suffered the first long-term injury of his young career at the start of the year and returned to play his part in the team’s Scottish Cup success at the end of the season.

She then suffered a brief injury setback at the start of the campaign, which ruled out her involvement in the side’s Champions League qualifying exploits, with the teenager admitting it has been a mentally challenging year to get herself back fit.

Speaking to RangersTV ahead of Sunday’s clash at Broadwood Stadium, Maclean said: “I’m really happy to be back. To be injured at the end of last season, then to come back and be injured the week before the season starts, wasn’t ideal.

“It is difficult to deal with, and when you are injured, you are not fully aware of the psychological burden it has on you until you have experienced it yourself.

“But I’ve had good people around me, and when I’ve been injured, I’ve been lucky enough that I wasn’t the only one.

“You don’t want to see anyone get hurt, but at least you have that support in the gym and other people to get through it with.

– I was bad about missing out on playing in the Champions League.

“We had two really exciting games, but I’ve learned a lot from it and I think I’ve matured.

“I’m really happy to be back and trying to find my feet again, which is nice.”

Jo Potter’s side suffered their first home defeat of the campaign last time out in a disappointing away loss to Glasgow City.

A visit from Hibernian to Cumbernauld tomorrow represents a chance for the Gers to respond immediately and end the year on a positive note.

It would then be a perfect send-off to 2024, the year leading to an all-time Scottish Cup triumph, making up half of a domestic cup double.

She added: “We are all really disappointed with how last Sunday went against Glasgow City.

“We set standards for ourselves that we didn’t meet, but we’ve done our analysis on it, talked about it and we know how important it is to get three points on Sunday.

“It is important that we learn from it. The league is not over yet and we still have half of the season left.

“We have to remember that but we also have to remember that our performance (last week) was not good enough. We are all on the same page and we know it.

“We were unbeaten up until that point and it’s important that we still have confidence in that.

“We weren’t good enough on Sunday and in the end we didn’t deserve anything from the game, but we have to remember how well we played up until that point.

“We still have so many things to look forward to and we want three points to go into the Christmas break on a high.

“If you look at January, we have our first game dead early back and then a semi-final against Celtic to look forward to.

“Hopefully we can continue the good run into the new year.”

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