Tick tock. Tick tock. As those jolly Jambo japesters are always only too keen to point out – 111 years and counting! The last time Hibs lifted the Scottish Cup there were trams on Edinburgh’s streets, for goodness sake! But maybe, just maybe, it’s time …
On the face of it, Sunday’s cup final should be little more than a stroll for Celtic. After all, the Glasgow team won the SPL with plenty in hand, despite losing a surprising number of games – seven. Mind you, when you are so dominant it’s easy to take your eye off the ball.
Celtic coasted to league victory with such ease that it’s hard to call the SPL ‘title race’ a competition. Really, it was over as a contest as soon as ‘The Rangers’ disappeared into the depths of the lower leagues – the question was always going to be: who’ll finish second?
With the resources Celtic have at their disposal, perhaps that’s as it should be. Now a lone giant in a diddy wee league, over the course of a long, hard – okay, maybe not that hard – season they have by far the biggest squad with the greatest quality in Scotland. True, they’re not up against much, but that’s not their fault. All Celtic could do was win, and usually they did just that. Not always playing pretty, silky soccer – but then we are talking Scottish football.
And yet Celtic surprised many critics of the Scottish game – and there are plenty of them – with that memorable defeat of the mighty Barcelona in the Champions League. They may play in a poor league, but make no mistake: Celtic are a good team, and at the end of a steady and satisfactory if unspectacular season, a league and cup double would be a fair reflection of Celtic’s current domination of Scottish football – the icing on the cake.
Celtic should have too many players of real quality to suffer any shocks on Sunday, with potential match winners all over the park – including two ex-Hibees Scott Brown and Anthony Stokes. Celtic are well aware of Hibs’ strengths (one in particular!) and weaknesses – an inability to deal decisively with cross balls is one area that Celtic will surely try to exploit. If Celtic’s attitude is right, and they bring their ‘A’ game on the day, there’s not a team in Scotland to beat them.
And yet …
Inconsistent is perhaps the most charitable way to describe Hibs’ season. Yes, there’s been the occasional fragile green shoot of recovery, the tantalising glimmer of hope that the team has turned the corner, but for much of the season Hibs form has been poor – that bottom six league position doesn’t lie. A hesitant defence that leaked goals, self-inflicited wounds, games lost or drawn that should have been won …
And yet … over the last few weeks, Hibs seem to have found their stride and have hit form at just the right time.
Maybe going three goals down to a First Division team in a Hampden semi-final was the collective wake-up call they so desperately needed: that remarkable fightback not only resurrected Hibs’ season but also perhaps exorcised some of the demons of last year’s Hampden horror show.
Perhaps it was the shared experience of that Falkirk fright, and the elation of the hard-fought victory, that lifted the spirits and galvanised the Easter Road men. They seem to have discovered a collective resolve, a fighting team spirit and self-belief that has been sadly lacking over what has been – Scottish Cup aside – a distinctly lacklustre season. Whatever the catalyst, there’s a quiet confidence and assurance creeping in at Easter Road – and at last, things are going the right way and Hibs have a team that is worthy of the name.
Young players of quality are coming through the youth setup once again. There’s real competition for places and manager Pat Fenlon has choices and decisions to make – it would be wrong to assume that Hibs are a one man team. The loss of captain James McPake, a natural leader, is a huge blow – his presence and experience will be sorely missed and it’s now up to other senior players to show that same level of commitment and leadership on Sunday. It’s a day for big performances.
And Hibs do have Leigh Griffiths. Whatever the young man’s off-field travails, Hibs seem to have unlocked Griffiths’ undoubted potential. With twenty-eight goals to his name, Leigh Griffiths has been the difference between relative success and abject failure at Easter Road this season, adding an impressive work rate to an unerring eye for goal. His attitude has been transformed and Griffiths has matured into a prodigious talent.
Whether Hibs can hang on to their talisman remains in doubt but Griffiths has at least one more game in a Hibs shirt – a game in which his name could go down in history as the man who brought the cup back to Easter Road after all those years. And for Hibs fan Griffiths what a great way to go, if go he must.
So Hibs fans in their thousands will head out west tomorrow more in hope than expectation. Yes it’s unlikely, but Hibs can win the Scottish Cup – although it would be very unwise to give Celtic the same three goal start they gifted Falkirk on their last Hampden visit.
Celtic, for all their qualities, are not invincible and this time round Hibs fans really have nothing to fear. Because, whatever tomorrow’s result, surely it could never feel anything like as bad as last year’s craven capitulation, that Hampden humiliation at the hands of Hearts?
The year of the underdog? Maybe. Perhaps it really is time. Tick tock …
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