A clean sweep of titles is rare in football – just ask Emma Hayes and Pep Guardiola how hard it can be to achieve. Here at Thomas Lyte, we have designed and crafted the full roster in Scottish Women’s Football.
The time comes for football to take a well-earned rest, we can celebrate another breathless season of trophy success.
Scottish Women’s Football has undergone a transformation in recent years, particularly on the domestic stage. And Thomas Lyte has played a key role.
In March 2023, the top two tiers of Scottish football unveiled a pair of brand-new trophies, mirroring the growth of the sport in Scotland. Designed and made by Thomas Lyte, the trophies for SWPL and SWPL2 are striking symbols of the domestic games’ ambition to keep pace with the enormous strides taken by the Women’s national team in recent years.
Having qualified for their first World Cup in 2019, two years after making it to the 2017 European Championships in the Netherlands and Denmark, Scottish women’s football is on a jet-propelled projection.
And now teams in the SWPL and SWPL2 are playing for two of the finest trophies in the British game. In keeping with the excitement surrounding the launch, the presentation of the SWPL trophy in the spring of 2023 was similarly dramatic. The trophy did laps of Glasgow in the back of a taxi awaiting it’s destination, as Glasgow City, Celtic and Rangers battled it out for the title on the final day of compelling season.
A 92nd minute goal eventually decided it in the favour of Glasgow City. They became the inaugural winners of a trophy that has established itself as a modern classic.
As has the Scottish Cup – one of the most prestigious and historic competitions in global football. The men’s equivalent in Scotland is the second oldest tournament in the world game, having first been played for in 1874. First held in 1970/71, the Women’s Scottish Cup may lack that extraordinary back story, but the tale behind its new – Thomas Lyte designed and made – trophy is similarly remarkable.
Unveiled in April 2023, shortly before Celtic and Rangers met in the first women’s final to be held at Hampden Park, the trophy is inspired by the Mackintosh Rose. Named after the artist, Margaret Mackintosh, who first depicted this Scottish symbol, the trophy is a celebration of the many elements that make the country what it is. It’s also a glittering illustration of just how bright the future for the game in Scotland can potentially be.
Speaking at its launch, Scottish FA chief executive, Ian Maxwell, said: “In collaboration with Thomas Lyte, we set out to create a new trophy for the tournament that embodies the bright future that women’s football has in Scotland. A tremendous amount of work has gone into creating this magnificent trophy and I look forward to seeing it being lifted for the first time by the winning captain in the Scottish Cup Final at the end of May.”
For Thomas Lyte, of course, its also an extension of our work south of the border with the English FA. As the official trophy suppliers of the FA and the Emirates FA Cup, we’re no strangers to iconic football silverware.
Now our association with the Women’s Scottish Cup – a competition that is rising in profile year-on-year – is an enormous source of pride for everyone involved in Thomas Lyte’s operation. We know we’re playing just a small part, but the Scottish FA’s ‘Accelerate Our Game’ strategy, which was launched in 2021, is clearly having an enormous impact.
Thomas Lyte’s clean sweep of Scottish trophies is completed by the SWPL Sky Sports Cup, which was launched in the autumn of 2022 and handed to Rangers after a 2-0 win over Hibernian at Tynecastle in December of that year. The match was the first Scottish women’s domestic match to be screened live on Sky Sports.
“We feel a bit of emotion,” said Rangers’ boss, Malky Thomson. “We were talking before about the enormity of the game, the bit of history there, the first-ever Rangers’ women to win a cup. It’ll go down in history and deservedly so.”
These are exciting times in Scottish football. And this is just the start.
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