Return of competitive football brings big buzz for St Johnstone's Hannah Clark

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The buzz for competitive football is back with a bang.St Johnstone WFC begin their 2022/23 league campaign on Sunday with a home game against Queen’s Park.Plying their trade in the second tier of Scottish women’s football, Saints have completed pre-season preparations and are hopeful of making a positive start to lay the foundations for a strong year.Defender Hannah Clark (20), a key player for the team in recent seasons, is relishing the return of matches where points are on the line.“The girls are in great spirits,” she explained this week.“From the end of last season to the start of this season, the standard, tempo we play at and fitness has improved so much.“We’re all just looking forward to getting started and we have a mindset that there is no reason why we can’t be challenging at the top end of the table.

We have a team with strong quality and I think we need to set our ambitions high.“Other teams will probably be favoured over us but we know within ourselves how good we can be, the talent we have got and the belief we have.

As long as we are backing ourselves, we don’t care about anyone else.”Clark continued: “Pre-season is great, the friendlies are great, but there is nothing like that first league game where you are going out to win the points.

Everyone is buzzing to have that competitive feeling again and being back on the pitch. Hopefully the effort that we’ve put in during pre-season is going to pay off.”This Sunday’s match takes place at the Riverside Stadium, home of Jeanfield Swifts.Queen’s Park were familiar opposition for Saints last term but Clark admits it can be hard to gauge how teams are going to line-up at the start of a new season.She explained: “At the start of the season it can be difficult to