Sarah Crilly joined Celtic from Glasgow City in December 2016, fulfilling a lifelong ambition and bringing with her a wealth of experience in both domestic and European competition.
The 25-year-old made her Hoops debut in a 1-0 win over Forfar Farmington in the League Cup last month and has featured in the first two league games of the season, helping secure an undefeated start to the campaign for the Celtic Women’s team, which included an impressive 1-1 draw with Sarah’s former team and the reigning champions, Glasgow City.
While it’s early days in the 2017 season, there’s already an air of positivity and determination around the squad, and Sarah spoke exclusively to this week’s Celtic View about settling into life with the Hoops and her ambitions for the season.
Sarah, welcome to your first interview with the Celtic View. How have your first few months been here at Celtic?
It’s been really good and really enjoyable. The girls have made it easy to make the switch from Glasgow City. I’m enjoying every minute of training and obviously it was a great result recently against City. We’re actually really disappointed not to come away with the three points. Celtic is definitely a club that’s going places and I’m looking forward to the season ahead.
There are a few new faces in the squad this season, so how do you think the group has performed so far?
The fact that it’s a completely new team – there are a lot of young players – everything just seems to have kind of clicked. You could see that in the game against Glasgow City. We were the dominant team for the majority of the game so I think things are going really well. Everyone understands how each other plays and I think as the season progresses we’ll go from strength to strength. The difference between the way we played against Hamilton and how we performed against City just shows everyone what we can do. If we can take that kind of form into games against Hibs, Rangers and Spartans I think we’ll do quite well this season and we can definitely push for a Champions League spot.
You’ve been in the game for a few years now, so how pleasing is it to see that kind of progress in a relatively short space of time?
It definitely shows the progress the team has made, to go from a 5-0 defeat against City at the end of last season to a 1-1 draw and a sense we could have had the win, it shows that the attitude of the whole club is changing. Actually, the draw against City was the best I’ve ever seen Celtic play. Some people would look at it as a point gained for us and two points dropped for City, but obviously we’re disappointed we didn’t take all three. I think, even at this early stage, it shows that the title race will be wide open and we’ll be up there challenging this year.
You joined Celtic in the close-season, and since then there have been a few other additions, including the arrival of Kelsey Hodges, Darcy McFarlane and Jaclyn Poucel from the United States. How much of an impact do you think they’ll have on the team?
The girls they’ve brought in have been terrific. Kelsey has been here since pre-season, she’s been doing really well and fitted in brilliantly. She’s an absolutely solid defender. Jaclyn and Darcy, who just joined a couple of weeks ago, really performed in their first game. I think that shows that they’ll really be competing for a position in the team and everyone was so impressed by the fight and determination of the two of them. We have a good depth of squad now. Before, Celtic had a good, strong XI but now we have a good 18. It’s a team that’s going places.
Reported by Celtic FC
Picture: Celtic FC
