Killie Girls Go Global

There was a press conference in the Media Centre at Rugby Park today to officially announce the draw for FC Kilmarnock's first ever venture into European competition. The treble winning squad will travel to Austria for a week in late September to take on Russian side CSK WS Samara, Portugal's Sociedade Uniao 1 De Dezembro and hosts IAC-FA Tiloler in group 8 of the 35 team tournament.

In retrospect this is not a bad draw for the Killie ladies as they have avoided the majority of the pre-tournament favourites from the Scandanavian countries and Italy, but three matches in six days is tough going for any team and could be a decisive factor. Last season the Yahoos hosted the group stage at Scummerset, is it any wonder the tournament organisers opted to stage this group in Austria even though Killie volunteered!

Only the group winners qualify for the next stage of the competition which is played on a home and away basis. David Heath said today that in the event of the team getting that far that their matches would "most likely" be played at Rugby Park...so the Theatre of Pies may well see European competition after all! The press conference started at 2.00pm and David Heath, Angie Hind (assistant coach/player), Donna Cheyne (SFA Football Development Officer) and Maureen McGonigle (Executive Administrator of the SWF) were all in attendance.

David Heath said: "I'm delighted to be associated with a Kilmarnock team in Europe once again. It was a remarkable achievement last season winning the treble and a just reward that they now get to test themselves against more formidable opposition."

Maureen McGonigle said: "It shows the quality of women's football in this area that Ayrshire teams have represented the country in both European competitions so far. The difficulty for us is that we do not get to see the opposition so we have to concentrate on the strengths of FC Kilmarnock."

Angie Hind said: "We have a lot of good players in this squad and plenty of team spirit. We also have many in the national squad who played against Austria and Portugal last year. We drew 2-2 with the Portuguese and beat Austria 4-0 so if that's anything to go by then we are in with a good chance. The girls have put in a lot of work pre-season and we have no intention of going on this trip just to make up the numbers, we aim to qualify for the next round and are confident that we can achieve that."

The big drawback with all this is that FC Kilmarnock are effectively a separate entity from Kilmarnock FC and as such will need to fund the trip themselves. The estimated cost of even just the group stage is around 20 grand so they need to try and get some cash together fast! Donna indicated that there are several fund raising events in the offing and details when they are finalised can be found on either this site or the official one...please try and support these events in whichever way you can...and join us in wishing the team all the best in the upcoming season.