Aidan Smith: What exactly did Hibs do at that Dublin training camp?

By AIDAN SMITH
Published on Sunday 27 May 2012 02:31

LAST Sunday I had nothing to do – no re-living of the game on TV, no victory parades to attend – so I started compiling 110 questions for Hibs’ owner, chairman, manager, players and – remember them? – fans to consider in light of the worst performance by a cup final team in living memory.

Question No.3 is: what exactly did the team do at that Dublin training camp? No.12 is: Jorge Claros – why? No.17: what’s your ambition?

I like No.21: do Stoke City operate positive discrimination for footballers who are contradictions in terms because Peter Crouch cannot crouch and the Easter Road loan player Tom Soares cannot soar and indeed basic running seems to be an issue? Here’s No.28: is asking fans to buy season tickets when relegation was still a possibility even legal under the Sale of Goods Act? And No.35: who do you suppose was more embarrassed – Pat Stanton or Lawrie Reilly?

No.37 is directly addressed at the businessman-friend of my good chum Simon who, after a decent year’s trading, decided to splash out on £180 hospitality tickets for a dozen associates, family and friends. That was a fine gesture, you poor fellow, but what have you done with your made-to-measure cup final suit, the green jacket with the white sleeves, the white trousers and not forgetting the giant stetson? No.43 asks: after the complete and utter failure of the scheme of filling the team with loanees, would you accept that you’ve unwittingly improved the image of real mercenaries who fight wars that aren’t their own because at least these guys take out the mad dictator and get the job done?

I don’t intend to list all 110 here but there’s one question, I think, which merits longer consideration: do you accept there’s more than one way to win a football match, that different systems do exist and have proved successful, and if so why wasn’t one applied at Hampden given the epicly ordinary team Hibs put on the park?

Why didn’t Hibs do a Chelsea? Against a side with better ball-winners and ball-players, why didn’t they just strangle the game? It’s not pretty and it may not be The Hibs Way (although this particular set of articles of faith have lain tatty and neglected for a while). But, if a mean, ugly, downright nihilistic performance – anti-football at its best/worst – had won the Scottish Cup, I’m sure the supporters would have forgiven them just this once.

Managers have to cut their cloth according to their means. Pat Fenlon didn’t inherit an Alex Edwards or an Ally MacLeod or a Russell Latapy – or any of the other creatives we’ve been privileged to watch down the years – when he took over at Easter Road and he certainly hasn’t brought one to the club these past six months. So, in such culturally-impoverished times, why not simply park the bus? Such a tactic might have worked. It couldn’t been any more sore on the eyes than the witless performance offered up on the day. Indeed, there might have been perverse pleasure to be had from such committed hoof-ball intransigence.

Managers talk a lot about tactics. They talk about them a whole lot more than fans ever utter these words: “That was a masterstroke by the boss at half-time, totally turned the game around.” Well, I was with some Hibs chums in Portobello the night before the final and the guest at our steak-pie dinner was Brian Weddell who’s Peter Cormack’s ghostwriter but is in fact a Jambo. Brian told me he’d been hugely impressed with Paulo Sergio as a tactician and one capable of such game-changing. He’s done this in an earlier round against St Mirren while against Celtic in the semis, Hearts had suffocated the game for 45 minutes, frustrating the opposition in the forward positions, luring them into a false sense of security at the back – then won the tie with a crucial substitution. “Sergio’s the reason I think we’ll win the cup,” said Brian, and with a masterplan not really being necessary against their hapless rivals, this duly happened.

As I say, you cut your cloth, and sadly this Hibs team don’t deserve the finest linens selected and dyed in their name, never mind a ten-gallon hat brimful of devotion and hope.

Taken from the Scotsman