HIBS captain Joelle Murray says her side know what to expect ahead of Sunday’s Cup semi-final clash with Partick Thistle at Petershill Park — and they’ll be preparing accordingly.

“We always take one game at a time, so now we can focus on the semi-final.

“We know the threat that Partick Thistle possess — they’ve got a good mix of experience and youth all over the pitch.

“We know it’ll be a tough game, but we’ll work hard on our strengths and try to exploit the weaknesses that they have,” she told the club’s official website.

Hibs have a little-known connection with the earliest beginnings of women’s football in Scotland. The first-ever women’s game should have been played at Kinning Park in Glasgow, but a rearranged charity match put paid to that venue.

It was switched to Edinburgh and when Lily St Clare kicked the heavy leather ball beyond the goalkeeper and between the posts at Hibernian Park on Easter Road, there were some ironic cheers from the 2,000 people who had turned up to watch.

Hibs had moved to Hibernian Park the previous year and were 5-0 victors over Hanover on the ground in the February in what was their opening fixture on it.

St Clare’s goal was the first for a Scottish women’s football team in the inaugural game played by women in Scotland. The date was May 7 1881, and the ladies were taking on England.

Despite the fact that the sides were representing the “Auld Enemy,” the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the “general feeling was to make fun of the match” among the crowd.

Louise Cole scored Scotland’s second in the second half, and soon after Isa Stevenson set up Maude Riverford for the third. Scotland, who had only been training together for a fortnight, had won their first ever fixture 3-0.

The Scots team hailed from around the Glasgow district and wore a kit of blue jerseys with a crimson sash around the waist that had a badge with two Union Jack flags on.

The English top was the reverse of crimson with a blue sash, and their badge was the standard of the English lion rampant. Many of the England side came from London.

Although there was an “appearance of bashfulness and hesitancy about the ladies at the start” they soon got used to the crowd and once they settled into the game their “running and dribbling received the commendation of the spectators.”

The game was met elsewhere with Victorian disapproval, of course.

The Fife News reckoned that the match was “a most disappointing spectacle, so far as football was concerned,” while the Glasgow News fumed that they must “in the interest of public morals, protest against the institution of an exhibition which can hardly be called decent” and that “football is not a game for women; and the spectacle of a score of girls careering about a field in knickerbockers is not to be defended on any ground of public utility.”

A second game was played at Glasgow on the evening of May 16 at the Shawfield Grounds and over 5,000 turned up at that one.

It was reported that the game would probably be the “first and last” women’s game in the city after it was abandoned when fighting broke out in the enclosure, the players were “roughly jostled” and objects hurled at them as they fled the ground in horse-drawn carriages.

Those pioneering players were — Scotland: Ethal Hay, Bella Oswald, Georgina Wright, Rose Raynham, Isa Stevenson, Louise Cole, Carrie Baliol, Emma Wright, Lili St Clare, Maude Riverford and Minnie Brymer. England: May Godwin, Mabel Bradbury, Maude Hopewell, Maude Starling, Ada Everstone, Mabel Vance, Kate Mellor, Geraldine Ventner, Eva Davenport, Minnie Hopewell and Nellie Sherwood.

Glasgow giants Celtic and Rangers meet in the other semi-final on Friday night at Airdrie. How Lily St Clare would have smiled.