KIRSTY MACLEAN has reflected on a whirlwind 2024 on a personal level as Rangers shape up for their final league outing of the calendar year tomorrow afternoon at home to Hibernian.
The 19-year-old midfielder sustained the first long-term injury of her young career at the beginning of the year, returning to play her part in the side’s Scottish Cup success at the conclusion of the season.
She then suffered a brief injury setback at the start of the campaign which ruled out her involvement in the side’s Champions League qualifying exploits, with the teenager admitting that it’s been a mentally challenging year to get herself back fit.
Speaking to RangersTV ahead of Sunday’s clash at Broadwood Stadium, Maclean said: “I’m really happy to be back. To be injured at the tail-end of last season, then to come back and get injured the week before the season starts, wasn’t ideal.
“It’s hard to deal with, and when you’re injured you don’t quite realise the mental toll that it has on you until you’ve experienced it yourself.
“But I’ve had good people around me and when I’ve been injured I’ve been lucky enough that I wasn’t the only one.
“You don’t want to see anyone injured, but at least you have that support in the gym and other people to get through it with.
“I was gutted to miss out on playing in the Champions League.
“It was two really exciting games that we had, but I’ve learned a lot from it and I think I’ve matured.
“I’m really happy to be back and trying to find my feet again which is nice.”
Jo Potter’s side suffered their first domestic defeat of the campaign last time out in a disappointing away loss to Glasgow City.
A visit from Hibernian to Cumbernauld tomorrow represents a chance for the Gers to respond immediately and end the year on a positive note.
It would be a perfect send-off to 2024 if so, with the year yielding a first-ever Scottish Cup triumph to make up half of a domestic cup double.
She added: “We’re all really disappointed with how last Sunday went against Glasgow City.
“We set standards for ourselves which we didn’t meet, but we’ve done our analysis on it, spoke over it, and we know how important it is to get three points on Sunday.
“It’s important that we learn from it. The league isn’t done yet and we’ve still got half the season to go.
“We need to remember that, but we also need to remember that our performance [last week] wasn’t good enough. We’re all on the same page and we know that.
“We were undefeated until that point and it’s important that we still have confidence within that.
“We weren’t good enough on Sunday and ultimately we didn’t deserve anything from the game, but we need to remember how good we were playing up until that point.
“We still have so many things to look forward to, and we want to get three points to go into the Christmas break on a high.
“If you look at January then we have our first game back dead early then a semi-final against Celtic to look forward to.
“Hopefully we can continue the good run into the new year.”
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