Gartcairn Women’s boss and club secretary Robert McCallum reckons promotion to SWPL 2 could be a game-changer for his team.
The South Championship leaders strolled to an impressive 8-1 win over Ayr United on Sunday as they moved three points away from the league title.
Megan Wands and Cheryl Watt hat-tricks coupled with Mhari Hawksworth and Jane O’Toole goals secured a comfortable win for the Lanarkshire side.
The 15-team league has split into a top and bottom half fixtures schedule, with Gartcairn needing to be Edinburgh Caledonia, Edinburgh City and Hutchinson Vale to seal title glory.
Promotion would be huge for the third tier side after news that the SWPL would be coming under the governance of the Scottish Professional Football League next season.
The current SWPL 2 will change to eight teams, with the winners of the North Championship and South Championship joining, along with a play-off winner.
McCallum said: “That was the target. We have quietly gone about our business while other teams have been shouting from the rooftops on social media and other platforms.
“People were celebrating being top after four games, but there were still so many games to play. We have quietly gone about our business and we now have a few to go.
“The ambition is to get to the SWPL 2 but it’s probably more of an ambition now that Neil Doncaster is involved, with the promises of riches and all that.
“It would be (transformative). I was looking at it, dreaming. There are eight teams going to be in that league which means you play each other four times.
“It would mean two trips to places like Perth and Kilmarnock, there’s a fair budget hike going to be involved there. But this is what we are here for. It would be good to begin mixing it with these teams.”
McCallum’s side have won 16 of their 19 games this season and have netted two shy of 100 in the process.
Moving one step away from top-flight football would be a big reward for his ambitious side. Rossvale are second and two points behind them.
He added: “There has been quite a number of very close games. There was a split in the league which was the right thing to do, as there were a lot of double-digit scorelines against teams in the bottom half.
“It became a ‘who could score the most’ competition. We’ve had four to win and winning all four of them is guaranteed to get us the trophy.
“But it will be difficult. Rossvale probably have the easier run-in over their three games. We played Livingston last month and they battered us but we had five shots on goal against them the other week, and scored five goals.
“We are just a brand new team. I didn’t really know what the standard was but it has really changed in this last year. Since the Women’s World Cup, our girls section has exploded. We have got a full player pathway for the girls section.”
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