Long-Range Efforts (Freya Leslie & Shetland Women)

Shetland Women reached the ScottishPower Highlands and Islands League Cup final in September 2025 – a landmark achievement for a side who play in a boys’ Under-16s league at home just to get regular games. Student nurse and forward Freya Leslie, 20, typifies the commitment required: interviewed straight after an eight-hour hospital shift ahead of the final, she describes catching a flight home the morning after the game to start a nursing placement. The piece details the extraordinary travel demands of island football – a 12-to-14-hour ferry from Aberdeen – and Shetland’s ambitions to build on this year’s Island Games appearance in Orkney toward the 2027 Games in the Faroes, supported by ScottishPower’s Highlands and Islands sponsorship and grassroots funding competition.