Kathy Hill: From Scotland to the USA and back!

Kathy started her playing career within the Rangers academy for 5 years before heading across the pond to play football for Old Dominion University. Kathy details the playing style over there to be much more focused on developing players as athletes, focusing on their physicality and fitness levels. She compares it to Scotland, commenting that “over there they focus on being an athlete so its about being quick and strong whereas over here its more about your technical abilities”. After her 2 year spell in the USA, she joined FA Women’s Championship club Durham where she played for 5 years. She made her return home to Rangers in the summer of 2022, and has gone on to captain the side to a Sky Sports Cup win and has now been named vice-captain. Kathy has been a part of the Scotland youth setup and been called up to the Scotland senior team on a few occasions, but is yet to win her 1st cap for Scotland, which she definitely deserves! 

However, her return to Rangers began bittersweetly. Unfortunately, amidst being named club captain, Kathryn faced an ankle injury and was sidelined for 4 months in Autumn of 2022. She came back and lifted the Sky Sports Cup with the team. More recently though, she faced a knee injury towards the end of 2023. However she seems to have fully recovered and played the full 90 minutes during Rangers’ SWF Scottish Cup win!! I spoke to her about her thoughts on the current ACL rupture epidemic that’s affecting women’s football- “obviously its a hard one because it definitely seems to be more common in females but I don’t know if it’s the pitches or just how women’s bodies are, but there’s obviously something that’s causing it to happen more in females so hopefully we can get a bit of research done and find out so we can try and prevent them in the future”.

With the season now having ended, I look back on Kathy’s personal goals for the season just gone and can say she has done brilliantly this season! The only goal that she didn’t manage to complete was getting her 1st cap for Scotland, but with her brilliant form and leadership going into next season, she is sure to achieve that in no time! It was a pleasure speaking to her and I wish her the best of luck with the season ahead!

P.S. Pinky is saddened to hear that his favourite footballer (Kathy) unfortunately hasn’t followed him back on Instagram. Hopefully his work to set up this interview will mean he finally earns that follow back from Kathy after relentless teasing from Grant!!

With around 150 young footballers at the Phoenix Girls FC prize giving awards night, Fiona said it was “unreal to see so many girls from a local area all playing football together”, as when she was growing up she was pretty much the only girl in her school playing football. Fiona also mentioned that for her “the most important thing to get young girls playing football is to make it accessible”, an admirable goal to strive towards for everyone involved with women’s football in Scotland. 

As I mentioned previously, Fiona McIntyre is the Managing Director of the SWPL, a role she has held since 2022. This role means she is leading the growth of women’s football in Scotland. When speaking to her about this role, she said “it feels a little bit surreal sometimes because the role didn’t exist while I was growing up, so it’s not a role that I ever had an ambition to hold”.  She’s obviously relishing the opportunity in this role, Fiona said that she knows that “everything that she does can have an impact on people so it’s something that she takes very seriously”, and that “it’s a very privileged role to have”.

Her role as Managing Director also means that gaining sponsorships, such as the Scottish Power sponsorship, are and will be ever important in growing the women’s game. To grow the SWPL, Fiona said that “we need investment for the clubs to get better and develop a more professional infrastructure for players to play in”, and that “sponsorship and broadcast revenue from the SWPL’s broadcast partners are probably the two main ways to drive new revenue into the game”. She mentioned that she was delighted to receive the Scottish Power sponsorship, but there are still huge sponsorship opportunities to grow the game.

Fiona was kind enough to reveal her priorities at the moment for the SWPL to me, saying that “the most important thing is always the competition - making sure that we have a competition that is competitive, exciting, and that the clubs and players are enjoying playing in it.” When I asked how she was planning on closing the gap between the Central Belt teams and the rest of the teams in the league, she commented that “the main thing they can do is to inspire the clubs to invest in the right places, such as coaches, so that they can try and improve the level that they are working at”. Her other priorities included “trying to drive more revenue into the game”, and trying to make it “more visible, making sure that more games are on television, making sure that more people can come to matches, and just making sure that everyone is the most aware of the SWPL as they can be”. 

It was an amazing experience to be able to speak with Fiona, and I wish her success in everything to come!