COOPER EYES SUPER FUTURE

St Mirren Women’s gaffer insists results will improve as kids grow into their roles

St Mirren Women boss Kate Cooper is keeping the long-term picture in mind following Sunday’s 3-0 defeat against Stenhousemuir.

Stenny climbed to the top of SWF League One as a result of the win, leaving them in pole position ahead of the split.

They scored all three of their goals in the first half of the match to leave St Mirren with a mountain to climb in the second half. The players fought valiantly, preventing the league leaders from adding to their total, but were unable to make a breakthrough of their own.

Saints dropped to eighth in the table and will be battling it out in the bottom half of the split, with the dreaded prospect of relegation hanging over them.

But despite that, head coach Cooper insists that the split will prove beneficial for her young Saints, as the club seeks to ensure its longevity by investing in its youth prospects. Sunday’s match saw Saints finish with two 15-year-olds, a 16-year-old, and a 17-year-old on the pitch.

Cooper told Express Sport: “People will look at the results but we can see the progress that we’re making. In the second half we really pushed them and if we’d have taken our chances it would have been a different scoreline.

“We were quite happy with the performance we put in, not the result, but you need to pay attention to the performances because results

● don’t always tell the true story.

“I want us to be sustainable for years to come, so we get ourselves there and we can keep ourselves there.”

That task is made a little bit harder by the recent break-in at Saints equipment container at Mossedge, when they had all their training and matchday kit stolen.

But Kate says they’re used to facing adversity as women in football and will overcome this latest setback, too. Next up is a clash with third-placed Falkirk at Mossedge Village in Linwood on Sunday 3.45pm.

Cooper said: “Falkirk are a bit of an unknown quantity. They’ve made a lot of signings and have brought up a lot of players from their youth pathway so it will be interesting.

“We always look to win our games and we go out with that agenda, but we’ve also had a number of new signings in recent weeks and so we’re in a transitional period too.

“We’ll go out to compete, continue trying to bed everyone in and then we’ll use the split to really develop the team and move forward.”