GLASGOW City head coach Scott Booth says it is “staggering” that both SWPL Cup semi-finals will be played at Ainslie Park tomorrow.
The Edinburgh venue has regularly hosted big League Cup and Scottish Cup games despite being the home ground of Spartans. Hibernian also moved into the ground as tenants at the start of this season.
Both clubs are involved in the semis, effectively giving them “home” games. Spartans play Celtic in the noon opener, while holders Hibs play City in a re-run of last year's final.
“To be honest, this is nothing new,” Booth pointed out. “Playing these games at Ainslie Park is what they've been doing for years, thinking it's fine.
“It's the fact that this year it has become two teams' home ground which makes it staggering they didn't see it as being an issue.”
Booth's club complained to the league management committee, whose response was that the venue for the semis was announced at the quarter-final stage. That still left a high probability that one, or both, of Spartans and Hibs would be involved.
“They're working against some of the sides in the competition, but we just have to be better than that and win the game of football,” the City head coach said.
Although Celtic are also affected, manager David Haley took a more sanguine line. “It is what it is, and we just have to get on with it,” he said
“At the end of the day it's a good big park – if it was a poor pitch we might have something to say about it.”
Haley is more concerned about his side's capitulation to Hibs in the league last Sunday. “I don't know where that second-half performance came from – it was really disappointing,” he said.
The 3-1 defeat put Celtic down to fourth, one place behind Spartans, setting up some added edge to the first semi-final. The second, between league leader Hibs and second-place City is the first test of two games in eight days between the clubs.
The two semis will have added significance for three of the goalkeepers. Rachel Harrison (Spartans), Megan Cunningham (Celtic) and Lee Alexander (City) are all in contention to be the third goalkeeper in Scotland's Euro 2017 squad.
Harrison has even left Danish professional club Fortuna Hjorring to return to Spartans because she wants to be more visible to Anna Signeul and play regular first-team football.
“I came back for a reason – and the reason was to play,” the 27-year-old confirmed. “I'm still training like a full-time footballer, but the difference is I'm not getting paid for it now.”
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