No man or woman has captained Scotland more than Rachel Malcolm.<\/b><\/p>\n
That’s the achievement she’ll mark on Sunday against England in the World Cup quarter-final, the first Scotland Women have reached in 22 years.<\/p>\n
She has led out her country on 53 occasions. Pretty incredible when you remember she’s only got 61 caps.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, it’s like every press conference, it’s a different record that she’s breaking,” said head coach Bryan Easson. “That’s just the mark of the woman, isn’t it? <\/p>\n
“We presented to Rachel, a few weeks ago, her 50th cap as captain. That was another milestone.<\/p>\n
“I asked everybody to give a word to describe her and we put this word map up. Just the word ‘Scotland’, she just epitomises what we are about.”<\/p>\n
‘Leader’, ‘passion’, ‘pride’ and ‘power’ were others. Her teammates Fran McGhie and Lisa Thomson, up next in the press conference, were similarly glowing.<\/p>\n
“She had those leadership qualities [from early on], she’s an absolute leader and a legend of the game,” Thomson said. “We would follow her through a brick wall.<\/p>\n
“Her pre-match speeches we’ve talked about before, but she’s absolutely incredible and she knows what makes this group tick on and off the pitch.”<\/p>\n
McGhie echoed those sentiments: “Rachel’s presence is irreplaceable for us and she brings so much to this team. <\/p>\n
“If she told us to do something we would, whether we believed it or not, just because we believe in her.”<\/p>\n
Malcolm was first made captain in 2019 before Easson’s appointment the following year and the head coach insisted that the last six years will be remembered for her leadership.<\/p>\n
“You look at the progress that this team have made over the years, Rachel is at the heart of it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The way she speaks and the way she plays, most importantly. When she does play, she leads from the front. But when she talks, she leads from the front, as well.<\/p>\n
“It’s the Rachel Malcolm era, I’ll be honest. You can’t look at the last five, six, seven years without mentioning Rachel.<\/p>\n
“The era of this amazing woman on my left is pretty strong, and when we leave this World Cup, I think we’ll put our heads well high.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No man or woman has captained Scotland more than Rachel Malcolm. That’s the achievement she’ll mark on Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-419520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-scotland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115193638008394110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}