Scottish Cup semi-final: the pain never seems to end for long-suffering Hibernian fans

By Alan Tyers

With respect, Mr McCleod, you do not know the half of it.

The last time my team, Hibernian, won the Scottish Cup, Real Madrid were about six weeks old. Newton Heath had yet to become Manchester United.

Britain was embroiled in the Second Boer War, The Hound Of The Baskervilles was hot off the press, Emile Zola was still alive.

A few weeks after Andy McGeachan’s goal beat Celtic 1-0 to win the 1902 final for Hibernian, Edward VII was crowned and Zola died, perhaps from shock at the result from Celtic Park.

In the intervening 111 years, Hibs have been to the final nine times, and have an unblemished record of failure. Our masterpiece of misery was last year’s 5-1 massacre at the hands of cross-city rivals Heart Of Midlothian.

Being 3-0 down to first division Falkirk after half an hour on Saturday, while obviously not ideal, was merely a workaday nightmare.

With the exception of the 16,000-odd Hibees at Hampden (number adjusted downwards after third goal), fans watched the build-up and grisly first half in the company of host McClean, pundits Pat Nevin and Peter Houston, and commentary duo Craig Paterson and Liam McCleod, whose assessment that “Hibs fans are scratching their heads, their Scottish Cup Achilles heel biting back at them again” ideally summed up the grotesque, surreal trauma of the first 45 minutes.

Thanks to the magick of posh telly, BBC Scotland is available at the dusty end of the digital channel guide even to those of us living down south. By half-time, we wished it wasn’t.

I don’t know if other football fans share this, but I find watching your team belch out a truly awful display is worse on TV than being at the actual ground.

At the stadium you have the comfort of fellow sufferers, and you can leave if you wish, which is a least a definitive end to the experience.

But, watching at home, even if you turn the TV off you know the Bad Things are still happening within it. You cannot help but pick at the scab, turn the TV back on again, see if things have somehow, improbably improved.

At half-time on Saturday, Nevin –himself a Hibernian fan – had the unpleasant task of picking through the foul-smelling sludge that was the team’s first-half display.

“It’s finger in the dyke stuff,” reckoned Nevin. “You don’t know where to stop it because the problems are popping up everywhere.” They certainly were.

As Hibs fans resigned themselves to the knowledge that there were still 45 minutes of hell to endure, co-commentator Paterson outlined the formational and technical changes that the team would have to effect to get back into the match.

“Hibs are going to have to go route B, plan B, route one, whatever works. You’ve got to get a goal back.” If only Hibs had been able to call on this level of tactical insight in the first half, things might have been so different.

And then, suddenly, weirdly, gloriously, they were. Hibs scored twice, and even having a penalty saved barely set us back.

The Premier League side levelled on 83 minutes and superior fitness told in extra-time.

Leigh Griffiths, our on-loan lone striker who carries the burden of the team’s attacking threat and indeed the burden of being the team’s good player, won it with a screamer on 115 minutes.

Nobody, not manager, commentators, pundits, fans or players could explain why the two halves had been so absurdly polarised.

On the final whistle, it fell to McLeod to wonder: “One hundred and eleven years they have gone without winning the Scottish Cup. You just sense – is it Hibernian’s year?” We will see.

The dream, and the nightmare, lives on.

Taken from telegraph.co.uk