2018 saw the club return to the top flight after a year’s absence, finishing fifth while proving some doubters who had tipped them for the drop to be wrong. Farmington also reached the Scottish Women’s Premier League Cup semi final while exiting the SSE Scottish Women’s Cup at the second round stage.
As we begin 2019, we take a look at some of the stats gathered over the course of last year:
25 – There were 25 competitive games in total for Farmington, with 21 league games, three Scottish Women’s Premier League Cup ties and just the one SSE Scottish Women’s Cup clash.
9 – 2019 saw the side finish the year with 9 wins overall, the first victory coming on the first day of the season back in February as we defeated Hamilton Academical 1-0. There was also a League Cup win over Aberdeen this month with a comfortable 3-0 win.
March saw another League Cup win as Farmington progressed to the semi finals after beating Stirling University 2-0. No wins in April was cancelled out by four wins from five in May, defeating Rangers 4-2, Spartans 3-1 and Stirling University twice, 2-0 & 3-0.
The final two wins of the season came in June and August with a 2-1 victory over Hamilton Academical before triumphing over Rangers 1-0.
This gave the side a win ratio of 36% from their 25 games.
2 – Just the two draws over the course of the season; drawing 2-2 with Stirling University in August while rounding off the season with a goalless draw at home to Hamilton Academical to give us a draw ratio of 8%.
14 – Last season saw just three defeats but playing in a higher league, it was always going to be tough to match this in 2018, losing fourteen games.
A loss to Hibernian was followed up by a March defeat to Celtic. April saw a winless month as we were beaten by Spartans, Glasgow City and Celtic before a solitary loss to the Hoops again in May.
June losses to Hibernian and Glasgow City, the latter being our only defeat in August and further defeats by Spartans, Rangers, Celtic and Hibernian meant our loss ratio for the season was 56%.
23 – We earned 23 points in total over the course of the league season. With seven wins in the SBSSWPL1, two draws and twelve defeats, we finished fifth, eleven points clear of the relegation zone. The points per game average for the season came to 1.09.
26 – After last season’s mountain of goals, the side found it hard to match the 76 scored in 2017, netting 26 overall in 25 games.
Averaging 1.04 in all games, this dropped in the league with 0.95 scored per game. Our top goalscorer with five was Caroline Heron, netting 0.27 goals a game in her eighteen appearances.
We were awarded just one penalty this year, however this was missed against Celtic in the League Cup semi final to give us a 0% success rate.
10 – Goals were spread across the team this season, with ten players all chipping in.
5 Caroline Heron
4 Robyn Smith, Danni McGinley
3 Nicola Davidson, Megan Robb
2 Cassie Cowper, Cheryl Kilcoyne
1 Kayleigh Brough, Hannah Stewart, Megan McCarthy
11 – Eleven players were involved with setting up 20 of our 26 goals.
5 Robyn Smith
3 Alana Bruce
2 Nicola Davidson, Caroline Heron, Danni McGinley, Megan McCarthy
1 Fiona McNicoll, Cheryl Kilcoyne, Tammy Harkin, Julia Scott, Cassie Cowper
30 – 30 players were used over the course of the season, one more than last season, with just nine making over twenty appearances. Two of the others made just one appearance while keepers Chantelle McKay and Beth Mowatt were involved in the matchday squad but failed to dislodge Fiona McNicoll from the number one spot. McNicoll was the only player to be ever present, playing every minute of the campaign.
25 Fiona McNicoll
24 Danni McGinley, Megan McCarthy, Robyn Smith
23 Cassie Cowper, Nicola Davidson
22 Kayleigh Brough, Cheryl Kilcoyne
21 Alana Bruce
18 Caroline Heron
16 Megan Robb
15 Erin Cattanach
14 Kirsty Deans
11 Leah White
10 Sophie Milligan
8 Alison Debio, Rebecca Dempster, Beth McPherson
7 Hannah Stewart, Tammy Harkin
6 Lindsey Dunbar
5 Lotte Deubel
4 Gemma Collier, Julia Scott
3 Kayleigh Noble, Beth Shillitto
1 Sandra Craig, Donna Paterson
7 – Seven players made their first ever appearances for the side this season with Donna Paterson, Beth McPherson, Cassie Cowper, Megan Robb, Sandra Craig, Hannah Stewart and Tammy Harkin all making their debuts.
52 – 52 goals were conceded over the course of the season, 2.08 in all games while it was an average of 2.14 conceded in the league.
3 – Three goalkeepers played a part in the season with Fiona McNicoll, Chantelle McKay, and Beth Mowatt all involved in the squad. The latter two unfortunately did not play a minute in the season due to the form of the ever present McNicoll.
7 – Seven clean sheets were kept by the Farmington defence this year. This included three games against Stirling University (25th March, 9th & 30th May) while also keeping one clean sheet against Rangers (5th August), Aberdeen (25th February) and two against Hamilton Academical (11th February & 28th October).
19 – A worse record by three compared to 2017, nineteen bookings have been given to Farmington players over the course of 2018 with two of these resulting in the only red card of the season.
Robyn Smith and Cassie Cowper could be considered the dirtiest players in the team this season, being responsible for four of the bookings each.
4 Robyn Smith, Cassie Cowper
3 Alana Bruce
2 Cheryl Kilcoyne, Sophie Milligan
1 Nicola Davidson, Caroline Heron, Megan McCarthy, Hannah Stewart
1 – The aforementioned red card was shown to Cassie Cowper on 28th October in the final game of the season against Hamilton Academical for her two bookable offences.
2-0 – The most common result in 2018 was 2-0 which occurred on six occasions.
The scoreline twice resulted in a Farmington win, with Stirling University being defeated on 25th March and 9th May.
The other four games with this scoreline were defeats as Hibernian won on 11th March and 7th September while Celtic and Spartans were the winners on 18th February and 15th April respectively.
35 – Farmington found the net on 26 different minutes this season and the most common minute for a goal was the 35th minute with three goals.
This minute saw Hannah Stewart net against Rangers on May 6th to put the side 2-0 ahead, the final score being 4-2 Farmington. Rangers were also the opponents when Danni McGinley scored the only goal on August 5th.
The third goal in this minute was Megan Robb’s consolation in a 6-1 defeat at home to Glasgow City on June 24th.
90+1 – At the other end the most common minute for Farmington to concede was the first minute of injury time. This minute, which was also the most common minute for Farmington to concede in 2017, saw them concede three times; Brogan Hay making it 2-4 as Farmington defeated Rangers on May 6th before Demi-Lee Falconer grabbed a late equaliser for Stirling University on August 26th.
Lauren Davidson also rounded off the scoring for Hibernian in their 2-0 win on September 7th.
4 – The most Farmington netted in one game was four goals and they managed this once in 2018, coming against Rangers on 6th May.
Goals from Robyn Smith, Hannah Stewart, Caroline Heron and Cassie Cowper saw the side win 4-2 at New Tinto Park.
6 – The most goals conceded in one game was six and this came on four occasions.
Glasgow City netted six twice on 24th June and 19th August while Hibernian and Spartans netted the same on 20th June and 30th September.
1 – We were the hosts for the first ever televised league game in Scottish women’s football on Friday 7th September.
BBC Alba chose our match at Station Park against Hibernian and the coverage given was fantastic and a testament to the work BBC Alba put in.
352 – We broke our attendance record with 352 fans attending our aforementioned clash with Hibernian on BBC Alba. With the match being live on TV and on a Friday night clashing with Scotland vs Belgium, we were delighted to have so many at Station Park.