By John Greechan

Copyright scotsman

When the dust has settled and the pain of defeat has passed, how will reigning SWPL champions Hibs reflect on a European campaign of extreme emotion? With pride, probably. And a determination to do it all again – soon. After a Champions League campaign that yielded one loss and one win, setting up an appearance in the inaugural UEFA Europa Cup, Grant Scott’s title-winning squad were unlucky in the extreme to run into Inter Milan in the qualifiers. A 5-1 aggregate defeat to the tournament favourites didn’t reflect too badly on a squad with plenty of youthful exuberance across its ranks. Rosie Livingstone, the 19-year-old winger who made her first-team debut aged 15, speaks for many when she says of the experience: “This year alone, I’ve been able to now make my Champions League debut and Europa Cup debut – and I think that younger me would be very, very buzzing and happy with that. So yeah, I think to now have that experience, yeah, when you see the calibre of players that we played against, I think that’s what you want to do as a player. “You want to play against the best teams. So yeah, definitely we want to be back there again next season. Yeah, it does just make you hungry for more. “It’s always an honour to play at Easter Road, as well. It’s something that I’ve dreamed about when I was younger and coming to the games with my dad and stuff. “I definitely think if you told 10-year-old Rosie that I would have been playing at Easter Road against Inter Milan, I would have bit your arm off and said, yeah, I’d love that. It’s a great experience.” After a 4-1 loss in Italy, Hibs were holding their own against Inter at Easter Road on Wednesday night – until a late red card for goalkeeper Noa Schumacher tilted the balance towards the visitors, who bagged a goal to put an exclamation point on their aggregate victory. As they head west to face Celtic on league business on Sunday, Scott’s players will be hoping to harness the spirit they showed against truly world-class opposition. “We’ve had a mixed bag in the season so far,” said Livingstone, the youngster adding: “Obviously, we lost against Hearts, which was quite a hard one to take. But to have these sort of European spells, although we’ve maybe came away tonight with a 1-0 defeat, I think we can be proud of ourselves and our character and how we held ourselves and that’s exactly what a Hibs team is, what you saw tonight. “Working for each other and resilience. We’ve got that fire in our bellies again to go again in Celtic this weekend. “We were so successful last year with sort of that just resilience and dragging each other through tough times if we’re maybe struggling in the game. Yeah, I think everyone should be … as weird as it sounds, should be proud of what we’ve done against Inter – and hopefully we can just take that into this weekend.”