THE Celtic Women’s team kick off their 2020 season this Sunday with a League Cup tie at home to Glasgow Women. It will be the first game for the Hoops in their new professional status, and new Head Coach, Fran Alonso, will be hoping to start the campaign with a victory.

Ahead of the opening fixture, the club are delighted to confirm that Kelly Clark will continue to captain the team in the 2020 season, something she has described as ‘a massive honour’.

While Kelly’s commitments in her accountancy career meant that she wasn’t able to move to full professional status at Celtic, her quality and experience remains vital, in particular for the new players coming into the squad.

Speaking to the official Celtic website, Kelly said: “It’s amazing that the club have managed to put it all together and we were the first ones to announce the new professional set-up and implement it. It’s such a great opportunity for some of the girls who were already at the club to fulfil a dream and go full-time in Scotland.

“And to be able to attract the players that we’ve brought in from down south and abroad, for the league as a while it’s a massive step forward. Hopefully it makes the league more competitive and, in the future, brings more quality into it. The sky’s the limit on how far it can go if other clubs can join us.

“I’ve worked really hard away from football to get where I am and the opportunities that I have with my career, so for the time being I think it’s great that the club can keep me on in in almost unchanged position.”

“The fact that I’m staying on as captain is a massive honour when you’ve got players who are full-time and training more than I can train, with my job as well. The fact that the club have stuck by me and kept me in the position – they know I’ll give absolutely everything that I can give, as I have done for the past seven years.

“I know they’ll support me when I need support and it’s just a mutual respect between myself and the senior people at the club that oversee the women’s set-up. That’s always been the case.”

The move to professional status has seen a number of the squad from last season make that step-up, and the club have also brought in a number of other players from England and the United States, while last month, the highly-experienced Fran Alonso was appointed Head Coach.

And Kelly Clark is delighted to be able to continue to play her part in the club’s continued growth and development, having now been at Celtic for seven years.

“It was maybe a bit nerve-wracking for me because I didn’t really know what to expect with the change,” she said, “but the club has been absolutely fantastic and now I’m just looking forward to the season getting started.

“If you go back, and I did some thinking about who has been at the club consistently for longer than me, and if you go back to when Neil Lennon started this run of eight league titles in a row, and look at the time he had then, the only two players who have been in first-team football for longer than me are Scott Brown and James Forrest.”

Now, the Celtic captain and her team-mates are looking forward to getting the 2020 season up and running with a positive League Cup result on Sunday.

“It’s not going to be easy. They’ve got a few former Celtic, Hibs, Glasgow City and Rangers players, while they’ve got a new manager, so they’ll be wanting to impress him too.

“But two weeks before our first league game, which is against Glasgow City, we’ve got our first competitive game so we want to get a win and then move on to another win, because it ‘s so important to build that competitive momentum before we play City.

“We’re going into a new season with professional players, new signings, and a new manager, so there’s no reason for us not to be going into every game fully believing we can win.”

Celtic v Glasgow Women
SWPL Cup
K-Park, East Kilbride
(KO: 2pm)
Adults: £5, Concessions: £3, U16s: free

Kelly Clark: It's an honour to continue as Celtic captain