On a bitter Glasgow night when the thermometer dipped to -3C and freezing fog threatened to roll in from the Clyde, high summer in France seemed a parallel universe.
It also appeared a magnet, drawing Lauren James, Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and co to ever greater heights as they strove to secure a chance of being in the hat for matches not merely in Paris but Marseille, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Saint-Étienne and Nice at next year’s Olympics.
