Persevered by Smith Aidan;

Author:Smith, Aidan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn, Limited

SEVENTEEN

YE OLDE FIERY SPHERES

16 March 2016

Inverness Caley-Thistle 1, Hibernian 2

JASON CUMMINGS WANTED to chuck himself off a bridge. For Darren McGregor it was the worst moment of his life. So what must Liam Fontaine have felt when, in the ninetieth minute, he mis-kicked horribly to hand the League Cup to Ross County?

This was a first-ever trophy for a team from a town with a population of 5,491, making them the most modestly-appointed winners of one of the top prizes. There’s losing big matches and there’s doing it the Hibs way. The campaign for ‘Hibsing it’ to be formally admitted into the language just received another huge spike.

Fontaine took to Twitter to apologise to the fans for his error: ‘I made a mistake and killed my dream of lifting this cup for a club I love.’ He spoke of dealing with the disappointment, moving on quickly. But surely the replay in the other cup has come around too soon for the team. And maybe on the journey to Inverness it will be wise to seat Cummings furthest from the coach door, just in case he spots the Kessock Bridge and is still in flyin’-heidy mode.

It wouldn’t be hard for Hibs’ record in the League Cup to be better than their achievements in the Scottish Cup, and the improvement is only marginal. The score for the number of times silverware has been hoisted stands at League Cup 3, Scottish Cup 2. The League Cup has only been in existence for sixty-nine years, less than half the longevity of the Scottish Cup, which might make three wins sound slightly more impressive. Maybe in your Wee Red Book, pal; not in mine.

Nevertheless I was fortunate to bear witness to the trio of triumphs in the lesser competition, the ‘diddy cup’ as Hearts fans would have it. These Hampden days are what Kenneth Clark on Civilisation – or maybe it was Davina McCall on Big Brother – would have called my ‘best bits’. They would fit easily on a football version of a donor card tucked in a leatherette wallet in the event of a fatal accident. Instead of vital organs the card would list vital memories: these were mine but they’re no use to me now, please look after them.

The first League Cup, in 1972, was 2-1 against Jock Stein’s Celtic, the apogee of Turnbull’s Tornadoes. The Pat Stanton final. The blackest December day lit up by a man with a brilliantly solid knitting-pattern model haircut and a brilliantly upright brigadier’s disposition, save for his habit of prodding the ball forward with hen’s toes, like every cocky, keelie product of Edinburgh’s hard-knocks Niddrie estate. And the brilliant pop tune from that winter which always reminds me of the Tornadoes is Python Lee Jackson’s ‘In a Broken Dream’. Winning the Scottish Cup, too, seemed within this flair-filled side’s grasp but it didn’t happen.

The second League Cup, in 1991, was the regeneration of a broken team. The then Hearts chairman, rotund Thatcherite bon viveur Wallace Mercer, tried to merge the two Edinburgh clubs.

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