Easter Road faithful will savour moment, but victory likely to be footnote in history of fixture

By STUART BATHGATE
Published on Monday 3 December 2012 00:55

PAT Fenlon’s self-control may have let him down during the Scottish Cup final, but he maintained his composure in impressive fashion yesterday. He celebrated on the pitch, all right, at the end of his Hibernian team’s 1-0 victory over Hearts, but never for a minute did he feel inclined to gloat.

If there were some Hibernian supporters who thought that this fourth round cup win was revenge of some kind for their club’s defeat in May, Fenlon urged them to think again. If any of his players are tempted to see this result as redemption, you suspect he will swiftly disabuse them of the notion.

Having plumbed the depths back in May, the Irishman knows that the whole club cannot be quickly transformed, and that one result, no matter how welcome to the Hibs fans, cannot undo what has gone before. Having only arrived at Easter Road a year ago, he may not know the history of the club inside out, but he is aware enough of Hibs’ recent travails to be immune to the danger of getting carried away by a brief revival of fortunes.

Players and managers insist that they take each game as it comes, and the stands had hardly emptied after this one before Fenlon was talking about the massive match his team have at Inverness this weekend. You understand that any manager takes that approach in order to help his team focus on their next task, but the reality is that you could have visited every bar in Leith Walk last night and failed to find a single Hibs fan who thought the forthcoming game against Caley Thistle was in any way equal to the derby win they had just witnessed.

The fact is that in football as a whole, not just in the Edinburgh derby, some matches are more massive than others. And, while Hearts boss John McGlynn declared himself and his players to be “gutted” by elimination from the competition, the Tynecastle club’s supporters can take more than a little consolation from the fact that their team’s overall record in the fixture remains superior – above all, in the biggest matches played between the two.

For example, it is well known that Hearts won the 1896 Scottish Cup final, beating Hibs 3-1 on the only occasion before this year that the two had met in the final. That match, at Logie Green in the capital, retains a historic significance as the only final to date to have been played outside of Glasgow – and, at least for Hearts fans, as one of the most important meetings in the history of the fixture.

In the first match between the teams after the 1896 final, Hibs won 2-0. Perhaps at the time some Hibs fans regarded that result as revenge. No-one remembers it now.

Or let’s look at a far more recent game from a different perspective. In 1973 there was a very one-sided derby. Hearts won it 4-1, and at the time supporters of the Tynecastle club saw that as some sort of revenge for the far more one-sided match which had preceded it – the 7-0 thrashing at the start of that year. It was worth the same number of points as the earlier defeat, right enough, but its status as some sort of consolation soon faded.

The 7-0 game is remembered well beyond the confines of Edinburgh football. No-one writes books about the 4-1 match.

Similarly, surely, with yesterday’s game. For a time, Hibs fans will cherish it. But before long it will be no more than a footnote to last season’s final – unless, of course, it proves to have been the first step to their club winning the trophy at long last.

Even then, Hibs supporters would remain haunted by 19 May 2012. For many of them, only a victory over Hearts in the final itself – and then by a crushing margin – would constitute true exorcism. And even then, as they celebrated last night and perhaps even dreamed of winning the cup, the more sober among them would surely have sided with Fenlon in seeing yesterday’s result as no more than a small step. It has enhanced the impression given by the current SPL table that Hibs are a better team this season than Hearts. But, with Hearts having enjoyed runs of 22 and 17 games without defeat as well as the one of 12 which ended yesterday, the history of the derby is still very much written in maroon ink.

Taken from the Scotsman