Scottish Cup final taught me to keep hands in my pocket, says Hibs boss Pat Fenlon

30 Nov 2012 08:25

THE Easter Road gaffer was given a four-match ban after making a gesture to Hearts fans at Hampden last May.
Pat Fenlon Pat Fenlon

PAT FENLON reckons the only thing he can learn from watching a re-run of last season’s Scottish Cup Final is to make sure he keeps his hands in his pockets in future.

The Hibs boss has never sat through a video of the 5-1 thrashing by Hearts and doesn’t plan to get his hands on a copy of the Hampden mauling any time soon.

With almost a completely new set of players set to lock horns with the Jambos in the competition again on Sunday, Fenlon doesn’t believe there’s any point in going over old ground.

But there is one mistake he made at the National Stadium that he’ll make sure isn’t repeated – his own one-handed gesture at Hearts supporters which led to an SFA charge.

The Hibs gaffer was hammered with a four-match touchline ban – two of them suspended – this season.

Ahead of the mouthwatering fourth-round derby he said: “I haven’t watched the Cup Final again and I don’t plan to.

“I can’t learn anything from it, I have a completely different group of players. The only thing I can learn is maybe to keep my hands in my pockets!

“Seriously, I can’t learn anything from the football stuff, nothing at all.”

So while Fenlon has no desire to tune in to the Hampden horror show he insists the club did learn from the heavy defeat and prompted the changes which have seen the tables turned in the capital, with Hibs riding high this season and Hearts toiling, both on and off the park.

That’s seen the Leith men installed as favourites to end their 12-game winless derby run in the Sunday lunchtime clash and Fenlon hopes he can hold his head high after the final whistle.

He admitted the criticism which followed the Cup Final defeat was used as motivation to prove the doubters wrong and he’s done that by making wholesale changes and improving the mentality of the team.

He said: “It was a definitive moment in terms of where the club was, that’s certainly true. We got back after the game and I spoke to people running the club.

“That was the time to say, ‘That has to change because today has proved how far backwards we’ve gone’. We’ve changed the club around.

“A few things changed my mind in the aftermath of the game but I’ll keep that to myself. I’ve had some bad days as a manager and you learn how to deal with them in different ways. It means when you have good days you want to enjoy them a bit more because you know there are bad ones still to come.

“You’re going to have ups and downs and it’s how you deal with them that defines you as a manager. After the Cup Final I locked myself away and didn’t want to see anyone for a few days.

“It’s not nice but you have to deal with it. It’s difficult because there are other things in your life, people outside the football circle who don’t get bothered if you lose a football match.

“You have to try and deal with everything else in your life and that can help bring you back to reality a bit quicker, although my family weren’t here for too long after it either so I dealt with it on my own a lot.

“You learn from different things and cope in different ways. I don’t let a lot out, I tend to hold it in so I probably dealt with it inside. I locked it inside and bring it out now and again to remind you not to get too carried away when things are going well.

“It was a difficult time personally. I know people judged me after that and I had to get on with that but you just have to deal with it.

“People had their say and I listened to some of the comments. That was just motivational for myself and Liam (O’Brien).

“People said, ‘I told you so’ and doubted us after the Cup Final but we’re in a good place just now. I think we dealt with it in the right way in relation to what we’ve done with the football club.

“When it happened it was important to deal with it and resurrect the club and bring it back to where it should be. I think we’re on track to do that. Both squads have changed drastically for different reasons. But I was hurting after the Cup Final.

“We go into this game in a good position in the league and after the disappointment of losing two games it was really important to bounce back with a win on Wednesday night before the game on Sunday.

“There’s a period of time where Hearts were in ascendency but I think there’s an obvious reason for that, although I won’t go into that. We’ve got to make sure we stop it when we can and Sunday is about getting a result for the fans.

“The way the support have come back with us since May is tremendous and I’m not sure any other football club would have been able to attract as many people as we have on the back of two poor years and a bad day in the Cup Final.

“We’re slowly winning them back and getting a result on Sunday would be a real bonus.

“I don’t need to convince my players it’s not about revenge on Sunday for the Cup Final. There are very few of them left from May.”

Taken from the Daily Record