UWCL | Glasgow City 0-4 SK Brann

Glasgow City's Champions League group stage hopes seem all but over after a bruising night at Petershill Park against the Norwegian champions.

Petershill Park on Women’s Champions League nights are ubiquitously orange and black and tonight a giant flag waves loosely through the cold, crisp October air, a new toy for supporters to call upon for fanfare. Walk down the ground’s 500 capacity main stand and at the other end a small pocket of SK Brann fans are clad in red and white waving their own flags emblazoned with club crests, the disco lights above them seemingly succumbing to the Norwegian rhythm, a foreshadowing of the contest to come.

If this was to be a last hurrah for the ground in the Champions League then it was going to go down in a whirl of noise and colour that infrequently appears during the Sunday afternoon routine. Under the lights may be one of football’s most leaned upon tropes, but the spirit it imbues across both young and old is undeniable. The pomp and ceremony of the Champions League orchestra theme welcomes the teams. Fans lifting their bodies first and their phones with flashes enabled second. Savouring the moment at the start, can be a way of protecting yourself from the future.

Leanne Ross made changes to her sides shape, post-match she would admit that perhaps she got those wrong as Brann would dominate the early stages, “I put my hands up as well in terms of the way we started the game, the formation; that was possibly the wrong decision and we looked better once we changed it for the second half but you can’t account for individual errors.”

In the lead up to the game Glasgow City’s Head Coach spoke of the experience older heads could share with those living these nights for the very first time. Perhaps the fact that only one of those figures from the sides that had gone quarter-final’s deep in the past, Lee Gibson, was fit to start led to City’s early spinning as Brann produced perhaps the most bruising opening spell from any side I’ve seen in Glasgow’s Northside, overrunning a City midfield that seemed uneasy in establishing its default position.