Katie Wilkinson scored a hat-trick as Rangers moved into second place in the Scottish Women’s Premier League with a convincing derby win over Celtic.<\/p>\n
The visitors extend their unbeaten run against their city rivals to 11 games and move to within a point of new leaders Heart of Midlothian.<\/p>\n
They are also one ahead of long-time pacesetters Glasgow City, while Celtic are left six points behind Hearts in fourth.<\/p>\n
Rangers started the better and Wilkinson rose at the near post to nod a Brogan Hay cross looping over goalkeeper Adelaide Gay and into the far corner after 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
The striker then set up Camille Lafaix with a nice one-two, but the midfielder stabbed her shot wide from 12 yards.<\/p>\n
Celtic came close to an equaliser when forward Poppy Pritchard could only head a Evie Rabjohn cross to the back post into the side netting, then the defender had a fine drive turned wide for a corner off the fingertips of goalkeeper Jenna Fife.<\/p>\n
However, it was Rangers who struck again five minutes before the break when Wilkinson curled an excellent 18-yard free-kick past Gay.<\/p>\n
Celtic had a bit more possession after the break without threatening Fife, while on-loan Roma midfielder Kim Shin-ji’s low drive was well held by Gay at the other end.<\/p>\n
Wilkinson completed the scoring from the penalty spot as the match entered stoppage time after defender Emma Lawton fouled May Cruft after the Rangers midfielder pounced on a poor clearance.<\/p>\n
The victory sets up a top-of-the-table meeting on Friday as Rangers host Hearts while City face Glasgow rivals Partick Thistle and Celtic visit reigning champions Hibernian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Wilkinson scored a hat-trick as Rangers moved into second place in the Scottish Women’s Premier League with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-589624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}