Fiona Brown: Reaching 50 Scotland caps 'massive' after injury hell

Fiona Brown has had to go through four major surgeries but could win her 50th cap on Tuesday

Fiona Brown says she will cherish reaching 50 caps for Scotland having feared she would never play again after being plagued by injuries.

The 28-year-old could reach a half century of caps against Costa Rica at Hampden Park on Tuesday evening.

Yet the Rosengard utility player admits she had thoughts of retiring before recovering from her fourth bout of serious surgery in 10 years.

"My journey's been anything but smooth," Brown said.

"It's the biggest honour to get one cap, so to think that I'm almost at 50 is a bit mental to be honest. There was a time I didn't think that I would play football again, so I never even considered that would be a possibility to get to that. So it's massive."

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Brown, previously of Celtic, Glasgow City and Eskilstuna United, had operations on her cruciate ligament in 2012 and 2015 - and went under the knife again two months after the 2019 World Cup.

Two years later and again injury cruelly struck her down, but she has battled back to play in her adopted homeland of Sweden and for her national side.

"I just love playing football, love playing for my country and, if I only played once, it would have been a dream come true, so to have got so many is really nice," the Dunblane native said.

"I'm just very grateful to still be in that position that my body is still able - and quite proud of my body for being able to do it and that I kept going. There were times when it was unlikely."

'We were proper Scottish again'

Scotland produced one of their best results under head coach Pedro Martinez Losa in Friday's 1-0 win over World Cup hosts Australia in London.

It was their first success against a team ranked in the world's top 10 since a friendly win over Brazil in 2019.

"We've been seeing these improvements, things going well for us since Pedro has been in," Brown added.

"To get that result against Australia was really important and we were proper Scottish again - that ruggedness, that being hard to beat.

"And, when we can combine that with the quality that we've got on the ball and the way that we can play football now, it's going to be pretty special."