Tears but no blood and sweat – Bhoys round it off in Style

Proving it is what separates winners from also-rans.

And that's why — as much as it hurts them to hear it — Hibs will always be also-rans in the Scottish Cup until they stop talking the talk and start walking the Leith Walk.

Every time they reach the final, they trot out the same patter everyone wants to hear. Every time they cross the white line, they fall a mile short.

Yet read the quotes. Watch them being interviewed. They went away from Hampden last night with the air of a team who'd lifted the trophy, not one who'd been whupped on the big stage yet again.

If this is how they're going to keep going about smashing a hoodoo stretching back 111 years, they might as well throw a sickie in the first round from now on and save themselves a load of anguish.

The only way they were ever going to beat Celtic was to take it to them and keep taking it to them, to play every kick like it was their last, to defend with their lives and attack with a single-minded hunger. Can every Hibs player look at himself in the mirror and swear he did that?

Sorry, but if they do, then some are lying. Because too many in key areas failed to commit fully to the cause at the game's most crucial moments.

It starts with Eoin Doyle's golden chance when it's 0-0 and they've flown out of the traps.

He's front and centre, unmarked and has time to place his header down low or back across the keeper. Instead, he nods it lazily and gives Fraser Forster the chance to be a hero.

In that instant, the same old, same old tone is set.

Minutes later, no one deals with Mikael Lustig's low cross from the right well enough, no one does enough to stop Anthony Stokes retrieving it and hanging a cross to the far post — and neither Ben Williams nor the green shirts around him do a damn thing to stop Gary Hooper finishing from two yards. Same thing on the half-hour. No one gets close enough to Stokes wide on the left, Williams doesn't want the cross even though it's in the air for an age, neither Paul Hanlon nor Ryan McGivern want it as much as Hooper and the ball's in the net again.

Now, it's all about them getting the next goal. But when Hanlon goes long and Leigh Griffiths runs off the back four and goes beyond Forster, who is bursting a gut to even TRY and get on the end of his cutback?

No one. Not a soul.

They had 20,000 punters in the stands who'd give a kidney for two minutes out there in the colours. They should know how much it means to these people. Yet they simply weren't willing to go above and beyond.

Hibs didn't play badly yesterday. The one big difference between this team and the one humiliated by Hearts a year ago is that this time they didn't look scared to lose, they didn't just sit in and wait to be picked off.

But that's not enough. Running around like a maddy's not enough.

Hey, even having a collective blinder might not have been enough, because they'd still have had to hope for the champions being below their best.

But it's worked out that way for plenty others in recent seasons at a National Stadium which has been a bogey ground for Neil Lennon.

It worked for those teams because they were able to come off at the end knowing there was not one more ounce of themselves they could have put into their task.

Sadly for Hibs, all the fire and desire and passion was pretty much spent by the time the last chords of Sunshine On Leith faded in the pre-match build-up.

Truth is, Celtic won without coming out of third gear. They took the Hibs back four out with a barrage of simple long balls, Scott Brown ran the midfield with a cigar on and Stokes will never have more freedom to torment his old side.

No one else in all-black had to be any more than a 7 out of ten, because no one in green and white was more than a 6.

And as the game ran away from Hibs and their fans grew more silent, so Celtic's bounced more joyously in unison, turning their back as one to do the Huddle and singing the names of former heroes from Hartson to Larsson to Jinky.

A wonderful sight and sound. Though, sadly one spoiled by those — and we're not talking a minority — who droned their way through the full IRA megamix for most of the first half.

That whole Boys Of The Old Brigade, Broad Black Brimmer and Irish Soldier Laddie stuff is distasteful enough at the best of times. But at the end of a week when Britain is still in disgust at a terrorist atrocity, it's more unacceptable than ever.

If Hibs need to commit more than ever to getting the monkey from their back on the pitch, surely it's time Celtic tried far harder to silence the morons who shame them so brazenly off it.