Scotland extras: How to keep crowd, one that belongs at World Cup, player ratings

Scotland's Caroline Weir and Austria's Sarah Zadrazil during a FIFA Women's World Cup playoff match between Scotland and Austria at Hampden Park, on October 06, 2022, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

How to keep the crowd

Hampden attracted a record crowd of 10,182 last night but there is a simple way to keep them; make it to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Glory hunters or not, the best way to tap into a whole new audience is to give them something glitzy and glamorous that can be enjoyed and celebrated. Next summer’s tournament offers to be the most well resourced competition that has been held in the Women’s game with its profile increasingly closer to keeping pace with the men’s tournament. Given the chasm that has been established across the last decade in domestic football with leagues in different parts of the world that have had sustained and steady investment, the funds brought into the game from participation next summer would be significant in a Scottish context.

The player who belongs at a World Cup

If the hallmark of an elite player is an ability to look entirely unruffled under pressure then Caroline Weir easily remains Scotland’s stand-out quality performer. The midfielder has settled seamlessly into life at Real Madrid and what was notable in some of the kick-and-rush moments in Thursday night’s win over Austria was an ability to keep her head when all around her seemed to be losing theirs at one stage. There was one poor decision with the scores still at 0-0 when she broke forward before screwing a wild 25-yard effort well wide of the target when Abi Harrison would have been a better option but the grace and athletic elegance of her overall contribution was hard to overlook. She deserves the World Cup stage to showcase her talents.

Par for the Corsie

Rachel Corsie is the undisputed leader within the Scotland dressing room. The vastly experienced defender spoke candidly before this game about the difficult in picking up the pieces after the 2019 World Cup and the manner in which Scotland exited the tournament and her desire to atone for that remains clear. It was there in her pre-match huddle as she spoke at length and then again at one stage in the second period of the gritty win over Austria as she used a player needing to treatment as a chance to get her own squad into another mini-huddle and distribute further instructions. Whatever she said had the desired effect as the Scotland players worked their socks off for 120 minutes.

Scotland player ratings

Gibson 6; Evans 7, Corsie 7, Howard 7, Docherty 7 (Mukandi 114); Kerr 6 (Graham 64 6), Cuthbert 7, Weir 7; Clelland 4 (Brown 46 5, Grimshaw 120)), Thomas 6 (Harrison 75 7), Emslie 7. Unused subs: Fife, Cumings, Beattie, Clark, McLauchlan, Hanson, Murray.