Hibs run out of steam too soon

Hibernian 1 / Aberdeen 1
Natasha Woods at Easter Road

ANYONE would have thought Hibernian had just lost given the reaction at the final whistle. The discordant sounds of frustration which reverberated around Easter Road reflected the high quality of the football with which they had begun their SPL campaign, but which they could not sustain for 90 minutes.

Jimmy Calderwood had the look of a man who knew his team had ridden their luck. It says much about the contest that the Aberdeen manager eulogised Hibernian’s play as much as Tony Mowbray.

But then Mowbray manages the side which felt like it had dropped two points, rather than the one which left Leith feeling fortunate to have escaped with a point. “The result disappointed me, because I thought the performance levels were exceptionally high for large periods of the game,” said the Hibs boss.

In truth, the early exchanges here weren’t exchanges at all – it was simply a torrent of pressure bearing down on the Aberdeen goal. The Intertoto Cup may ultimately have proved fruitless, but the sharpness honed by four competitive fixtures was evident as Hibernian strung together a series of slick, passing moves.

Aberdeen goalkeeper Jamie Langfield was in constant action, denying Abdessalam Benjelloun, Dean Shiels and Scott Brown in quick succession as the home side ran through a repertoire of incisive attacks which had Aberdeen forced on to a back foot which looked increasingly unsteady.

Karim Touzani, at the heart of Aberdeen’s defence, was one of those who looked completely shell-shocked by the onslaught; the tempo of the SPL proving a culture shock for a defender schooled in Dutch football.

Yet every football fan knows the punchline when such obvious panache does not equate to a goal. For however irresistible your team may look, it counts for little without that final, crucial touch.

Stevie Crawford provided a painful lesson of that on 19 minutes when Aberdeen managed a rare foray forward and the striker was given far too much room by Chris Hogg. Still there was fortune in the goal, for Crawford’s shot took a mighty deflection off Rob Jones, Hibernian’s other centre-half, to leave goalkeeper Simon Brown stranded.

It was hard to imagine a goal more against the run of play, but Mowbray’s side did not waste much time cursing their luck. Better to get even, and they managed that soon enough.

The move that produced the equaliser carried the Hibs’ trademark. Brown and Paul Dalglish, just on for the injured Benjelloun, linked neatly as the ball was worked into the Aberdeen box.

Dalglish picked out Chris Killen with a pass, and while his goal-bound shot was blocked , it fell to the feet of Shiels. The 21-year-old almost conspired to miss the chance, his shot spiralling up on to the underside of the crossbar.

There was a momentary pause as the referee waited for his assistant to signal the ball had bounced down and over the line, but by then Shiels was already wheeling away in delight.

“I saw the keeper was going to go low so I tried to stick it high – but not that high,” said Shiels, now fully recovered following surgery to remove an eye last season.

Still there were glimpses of the vulnerabilities which betrayed Hibs last season; panic setting in among the defence when the ball was lofted towards the far post and Steve Lovell managed to get his head to it, only to see it blocked away amid a scrum of players on the goal line.

While the second half began with Hibs in the ascendancy again, it soon became apparent that Mowbray’s players could not physically sustain the tempo, and the pace dropped out of the game.

That suited Aberdeen, and on the hour their more patient build-up almost created a goal when Jamie Smith slid the ball into the run of Chris Clark and he screwed a cross-cum-shot across goal. Simon Brown pushed it away with his fingertips, but Hibernian were lucky the parry eluded the other red shirts in the penalty box.

There was more composure to Aberdeen’s football by now, as they adjusted to their enforced role of playing on the break, while there was a frenetic nature to Hibernian’s play as their frustration started to show.

It was almost, but not quite for the home side. First Steven Whittaker failed to find the target after being played in from a swiftly taken free-kick, and then substitute Amadou Konte picked out Michael Stewart only for the former Manchester United player to fail to find the killer pass across the six-yard box.

And still, fleetingly, Aberdeen threatened to create an even greater sense of injustice. Never more so than, when with six minutes to go, Darren Mackie got clear down the inside left channel and blasted a shot inches wide of the far post.

Calderwood admitted there were a couple of moments in the second half when he thought his team might nick it, but he acknowledged it would have been larceny of the cruellest type. And Hibernian, amid their collective frustration, didn’t deserve that.

Taken from the Sunday Herald