Alloa Athletic Women have now completed their League Cup group stage campaign, with a mixture of results and plenty of lessons to take forward as the focus now turns to the league campaign.

The campaign began with a narrow defeat to Murieston, with the team showing plenty of positives despite ultimately coming away without anything to show for their efforts.

Our second fixture against Carron Huskies proved to be a frustrating one, with the match awarded as a 3-0 victory to Alloa following a forfeit by the opposition. While the three points went our way, the circumstances meant the team missed out on another competitive fixture.

Instead, the two sides arranged a bounce game, with Alloa coming out on top in a high-scoring encounter, winning 12-0.

Alloa lead for large parts of the game against Central but ultimately fell short with a flurry of strikes from the hosts.

The following fixture against Cumbernauld Colts brought another disappointing defeat and, in turn, effectively ended Alloa’s hopes of progressing from the group.

The final fixture saw Alloa face Linlithgow Rose, with the team enduring a difficult afternoon. Alloa were forced to play with ten players for more than an hour, providing another challenging experience for the squad.

There were also individual positives throughout the campaign, with Amy Cully finishing the group stage as Alloa’s leading scorer with seven goals, while Nicole Smith followed with three.

Manager Jill Leiper reflected on the campaign:

“We’ve had a mixture of results throughout our League Cup group campaign, with some performances and results that were naturally more disappointing than others.

However, I don’t think the scorelines tell the full story of the learning and development this group has experienced. We’ve faced different challenges, identified areas we need to improve and, importantly, seen a lot of positive development both on and off the pitch.

We now want to take that growth into the league campaign. We’re confident that we can compete against every team within the league structure, but our focus will be on bringing all the different elements of our game together consistently.

If we can continue to build on the progress we’ve made, maintain our standards and keep developing as a team, we’re excited about what we can achieve and the season ahead.”

With the League Cup campaign now behind us, attention turns firmly towards the league campaign, which gets underway on Sunday, October 4, when Alloa Athletic Women welcome Carron Huskies.

The squad will be looking to put everything learned over the League Cup group stage into practice as the competitive league campaign begins.