Magic back hoping to end cup jinx

Some double over, it hurts so much. Some sink to their knees. One of the inconsolable is Allan Johnston.

It is a snapshot from an unhappy history in cup competitions for the former Scotland winger. Nine minutes later he was one of two players to have a penalty saved as Bolton lost the shoot-out. “Somebody else (it was Michael Johansen) missed after me, so it wasn’t like it was the penalty.” This is the first thing that comes to mind when Johnston is asked for his cup memories, and it doesn’t bode well.

“I should have kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?” he asks, after recalling the climax to that match. He does not stop there, though. “I got to the semis with Middlesbrough as well and we got beat. I must be a bit of a jinx.”

Who was that against? “Arsenal.”

This time the coup de grâce was less dramatic. Three years ago Gianluca Festa’s own-goal had Middlesbrough chasing the game from late in the first half and they never caught up with it.

As Johnston slips into more tales of woe it is time to take stock. Five years ago he was supplying Gudjohnsen, now of Chelsea, and jinking past England internationals Ugo Ehiogu and Gareth Southgate. His opponents in that second semi-final, two years later, included Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira. This was the company he was keeping during a nomadic tour of the north of England. Now, aged 31, he is a senior figure in the youthful Kilmarnock side preparing for the third instalment in a trilogy of matches against Hearts, the first of his many former clubs. He has been a youthful prodigy, a pioneer of the Bosman transfer, an international regular and, latterly, something of a journeyman.

In a little over five years, since December 1999, he has had seven clubs. After illustrating his emergence at Tynecastle with a memorable hat-trick at Ibrox, Johnston became one of the first Scots to go to Europe under freedom of contract, incurring the wrath of Hearts supporters and his manager, Jim Jefferies, for joining Rennes in 1996. Sunderland signed him for £550,000 a year later, but an initially-successful three-year spell on Wearside was punctuated by loans to Birmingham and Bolton. He moved to Rangers under freedom of contract at the start of season 2000-01, was sold to Middlesbrough for £600,000 a year later and subsequently loaned to Sheffield Wednesday before Jefferies lured him back to Scotland with the security of a three-year contract that will keep him at Rugby Park until he is 33. This time he is the old head among the blossoming talents of Kris Boyd, Steven Naismith, Gary McDonald and Stevie Murray.

“There are a lot of young guys already in the first team here,” says Johnston. “There’s a good spirit there as well. You usually find that in teams with a lot of young players. It’s strange, but I still think of myself as one of the young ones.”

Maybe the constant flitting has hastened the passing of time for Johnston. He has played in some landmark games, but each chapter of his career has been so short that the plot has not been able to develop. On Wednesday he will play his 23rd game for Kilmarnock, the most he has featured for any of six clubs since Sunderland first allowed him to leave, on loan, in 1999.

His previous spells in Scotland were with a Hearts team emerging as a contender in the top flight and a dominant Rangers side under Dick Advocaat. Perhaps the Scottish Cup holds happier memories than its English counterpart. Did he ever get to the final? “Yeah, with Hearts. We were beaten by Rangers.” That was his last game for Hearts, the final of 1996 in which a Gordon Durie hat-trick and a Brian Laudrup double won the Cup for Rangers. Johnston was long gone two years later, when Jefferies’s side exacted their revenge.

What about with Rangers? “We got beaten in the semis, again, by Celtic.” By this point Johnston’s audience is wincing with each painful recollection. “A bit of a jinx, eh?” Johnston’s momentum has carried him beyond the parameters of the conversation. The Celtic defeat was in fact in the last four of the League Cup. His sole Scottish Cup campaign for Rangers in March 2001 ended at Tannadice in the fifth round, where a David Hannah goal put an unspectacular Dundee United side past Advocaat’s expensive unit.

So much for the past. Wednesday brings a shot at redemption. Johnston and Kilmarnock meet Hearts in a fight to the finish. The prize, a quarter-final tie against Livingston. A great shot at another semi-final, if they can get by a Hearts side managed by John Robertson, once Johnston’s teammate at Tynecastle.

“His record speaks for itself. He did it as a player and he is doing it as a manager,” says Johnston. “You can’t help but learn from playing with someone like him.”

They were very different in style, however. Robertson worked over 90 minutes to be there for that one second when the goal beckoned, a born finisher. Johnston, despite the hat-trick that made his name, has never been a prolific goalscorer and has often been employed as a winger, most notably during a 17-cap Scotland career. In character, too, they are poles apart. Johnston is reserved, while Robertson has been taking on all-comers since his return to Tynecastle.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk