On International Women’s day, we bring you the first in a series of interviews with the AFC Women’s team. First up is full-back Loren Campbell.

Aberdeen FC Women made a superb start to their season by winning their first four matches and scoring 23-goals in the process. Full-back Loren Campbell says the players have put the disappointment of last season behind them and delighted to have started the new season so positively.

“We’ve started really strongly, scored a lot of goals and not conceded very many either. We had a stop/start pre-season with the new management coming in and we had a few friendlies arranged that the weather put a halt to, so we came in to our first game of the season as pretty much our first game together. To hit the ground running like we have is really quite impressive and we’re chuffed as a team with the way we have started”.

The 27-year-old defender joined the Dons at the age of 12 and was a regular in the team when they were previously in the top-flight of the women’s game. Now playing two levels down from the top league, Loren admits that there is a difference in standard.

“We’ve started the season winning four out of four and we’ve scored a lot of goals, where we actually struggled for goals last season. We’ve probably not played some of the better teams in the league so far. To be honest, there is a gulf from the league above but it’s the league we’re in and we have to beat everyone in the league to go back up”.

Loren credits the new management team of Emma Hunter and Harley Hamdani for much of the team’s early season success. “They’ve set a high standard from the get-go, it’s been impressive the way that the club have backed us as well”.

“The standard of training is very good because of the coaches they’ve put in place, they’re both B Licence holders. We’ve not been in this league before so we don’t know much about our opponents week-to-week, so the first half of the season is just getting to know a bit about the teams. It helps being part of the club with the video analysis and Harley and Emma obviously do that a week or two before we play, so they’re probably more educated on the other teams than the players are”.

In addition to their on-field training sessions at Aberdeen Sports Village two nights a week, the Dons are also taking advantage of the gym facilities within Pittodrie, something which Loren feels is a big help on matchday. “On Tuesday we do a lot of fitness and work on patterns of play to take into Sunday and then Thursday is more of a tactical session and we really look at the team that we’re going to play and how we want to play against them”.

“We use the gym at Pittodrie on Wednesday nights now too and it probably gives us a wee bit of an edge over what other teams in our league have. We score quite a lot of goals in the last twenty minutes of our games and thinks it’s purely down to fitness levels and our level of training compared to everyone else in our league”.

As a former Scotland Under-17 and Under-19 cap, Campbell is in a perfect position to mentor team-mates Eilidh Shore and Bayley Hutchison who have just been named in Pauline MacDonald’s latest Scotland Under-17 squad. Although she’s happy to pass on her experiences, Loren isn’t so keen on being called ‘one of the older players’.

“I broke into the team when I was fifteen or sixteen so I understand exactly what they’re going through and I remember I looked up to the older ones when I was that age. It’s strange to be called an older one now though!”.

Campbell can hardly be considered old, but she knows from experience the value of having good youngsters in the team. “It’s good to see them follow the pathway that I took through Scotland youth systems and it’s good to see another crop of good young players coming through. The teams I came through in were very successful youth teams and they brought a lot into the first team when they got there”.

As well as playing for the Dons, Loren also works full-time in the city, and she previously took a year away from Aberdeen due to work commitments. The senior electrical and instrumentation designer enjoys balancing her football with a busy career. “I took a year out for work, I still played football that year for Caithness Ladies which was a lower standard but it helped me tick over. It made me realise how much I had missed it and how high a standard of football there is down here. I have a normal nine-to-five job so it’s not too bad, I don’t do shifts like some of the girls in the team. I think it’s good for a life/work balance managing to get football into your daily life”.

On-the-field, Loren says that the aim or the season is clear for everyone involved. “We want this to be our comeback season. We’ve obviously gone down and we feel that maybe we shouldn’t have gone down the way we did because we beat everyone bar the top two. We feel we should be going straight back up and collectively we’ve spoken about that and that is our aim”.

AFC Women face East Fife in SWFL Division 1 North on Sunday at Aberdeen Sports Village. Kick off is at 1pm.