Aberdeen Women’s Bailley Collins hopes her side can improve on their Scottish Cup performance when they return to league action this weekend.
The Dons beat third-tier Hutchison Vale 2-0 in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup on Sunday to secure a mouth-watering away trip to nine-times winners Glasgow City next month.
However, it was a performance which left interim coach Gavin Levey calling for better from his players.
Collins, who played on the wing for the cup tie, agreed with Levey’s reaction after the match, saying the game was “frustrating” – but was relieved to reach the fifth round.
Improvement needed for Hamilton revenge mission
She hopes Aberdeen can take learnings from the Hutchison Vale clash and put them to good use when they host Hamilton Accies in SWPL 1 on Sunday.
Collins said: “We had a plan before the game and it was to be ruthless in the final third, and that just didn’t happen for us during the game.
“At the end of the day, we’re through to the next round. We’ve got the chance now to go even further in the competition, which is what we want to do.
“I think it was a frustrating performance (against Hutchison Vale) because we know we can play better. If we had played like it in the league, we would’ve been punished for it.
“It’s a win – and that’s what we’ve worked towards – so, the performance is something we can build on in training this week before we play Hamilton.
“The last time we played them we got beat – they’re always a tough team to play against. But we didn’t take our chances and we were punished for it, so we don’t want that to happen again.
“The Hamilton game is chance for us to climb out the bottom two in the league, and then we have Hearts at home, which is another game we want to take points from.”
Collins reckons there were some positives to take from the fourth round cup performance, including the Dons’ ability to grind out an important win even when they were not on top form.
She added: “Last season there were games which were quite similar, where we didn’t play as well, but we managed to pick up the results and the points we needed.
“We did that on Sunday, again, and it’s a positive to take – we have a good mentality that even when we’re not playing our best, we can still dig deep and find a result from somewhere.”
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