“It came out of team meetings – the girls saying that they didn’t have a clear identity, a sense of what they should be doing on the pitch. Who are Dundee United, what are we about?”
Dundee United Women’s first team coach Graeme Hart is honest about the growing pains he as a coach – and his players – have experienced this season, their first in the top league.
He is honest too about the mid-season identity crisis that wracked the team.
“The first half of the season we just battled for results, with no clear philosophy,” he explained.
“Now we play football the right way. We are open and expansive, creating chances by getting the ball high and wide.”
I’d been invited on the team bus for the big away match against Hamilton Accies, with United in a wee three-team tussle with Aberdeen and Hamilton to avoid the relegation play-off place.
It was an informal start. Hart was holding his puppy Lazlo when he welcomed me outside the club shop at Tannadice.
“He’s no coming. No allowed dogs pitchside.”
The club had laid on a fantoosh coach for the trip, with leather seats and tables, cases of spring water and Lucozade.
“Hurry up Georgie, yer the last one!” someone shouts down Tannadice Street, as 17-year-old Dundonian playmaker Georgie Robb laughs her way up the hill to meet the bus.
All the players cheerily fist bump their coaches as they board, shouting greetings down the aisle to their pals.
I went through the bus, speaking to the players.
The recurring theme was of that big mid-season change in style and personality in the team.
“Since Christmas there’s been a turnaround,” said Jo Fraser, the attacker from Aberdeen.
“There’s a way of playing every game that’s clear to see. So even if we lost it’s still playing from the back, playing through the thirds.”
Another big change since winter is in terms of personnel.
Summer Christie transferred from Hamilton in January and had just been told she was making her first United start in the game against her old side. Joining the Terrors has been a funny sort of homecoming for the Larbert native.
“I used to play with [United youngster] Kai Fotheringham at school, and my brother was in a Dundee United boys club, so it feels good to join the club,” she said.
“It’s been a great group to join. Everyone’s been really welcoming.”
The New Douglas Park clash was an excellent spectacle. United were true to their word; they brought the ball down and played at every opportunity.
Accies applied an aggressive press, harrying and pressuring, and it took courage to keep playing passing football. But United persevered, at times slicing elegantly through the opposition, at times coughing up possession and having to scramble backward in desperate defence.
Midweek Spartans clash
It was fun to watch, and looked great fun to play in. It ended 1-1.
With five games left, United, who can’t be caught by bottom side Glasgow Girls, are five points clear of the play-off place.
They face Spartans on Wednesday night hoping to take another stride towards safety.
And as I watched the draw with Hamilton from the stands, a hopeful pattern emerged: senior players taking a very active role over their teenage teammates.
The older women bark instructions (“Summer get in the box, right in! Georgie in the middle, in the middle!”) and the younger lassies fire about the pitch like quiet atoms, heeding everything and saying little.
Natasha Bruce, the 28-year-old midfielder, is aware of her on and off field roles, as she explained on the long, late bus back up the road to Dundee.
“I keep them [younger players] on reins – I’m the puppet master” she laughed.
And off the pitch? “It’s way more than football,” she said.
“Women’s football is about more than that. It’s important for the younger player that we’re building something for the future. We have always looked to the youth, and supported the younger teams.”
Hart concurs, and the boss points again to that vital break over winter where players and coaches melted down and reforged the chassis of this women’s team in culture, style and personality.
“We [now] talk about being brave, relentless and having that belief,” he said.
“We want to play football that people enjoy coming to watch. Now we’ve a clear identity, that can filter down through the girls academy.”
As we arrive back into Dundee and the friendly farewells are dished out, four hardy players climb into Jo Fraser’s Toyota Aygo to carry on their journey up the road to Aberdeen. A 14-hour round trip for them.
With commitment like that, small wonder that they expect a big say in the style of play.
The midwinter schism will not be the last of the growing pains experienced by the women’s team of Tannadice Street. But if they can press on and secure survival in the last few games of this season, it is easy to imagine the evolution continuing, with women’s Premiership football growing further into its place in Dundee’s sporting life.
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