“Their Hearts are broken … Their Hearts are broken … Sorrow … Sorrow …”

Most long-term and regular readers of this blog will know that I occasionally write stories about other clubs in Scotland. This one is for my friends at Hibs.

I’ve written a few on Hearts this season, predicting that they would not be champions because a combination of nerves, stress, panic and a general lack of quality, mostly in the dugout, would undo them. Imagine my satisfaction at being proved right.

One of my favourite articles to write for this blog was about a non-Celtic game.

It was about the 2016 Scottish Cup final, which Hibs won.

It is a game for which I still hold a very warm place in my heart.

Our club wasn’t playing that day and took no part in the proceedings, but a couple of Celtic players did take part and played starring roles. That is one of the reasons why I am such a big fan of the game itself and have watched it dozens of times in the years since.

What regular readers will also know is that I’ve always had a little place in my heart for Hibs. In part, that’s because I lived with a couple of their fans while at university and I dated a Hibs fan after that.

I’ve enjoyed some good nights in Edinburgh with some truly amazing people.

I’ve also attended Edinburgh derbies at Tynecastle, Easter Road and Hampden, although not always with satisfying outcomes.

I always like to say that context is important to understanding a lot of events in Scottish football. You cannot understand my satisfaction at that 2016 result without understanding the circumstances in which it came about.

We had lost the semi-final to the Ibrox club on penalties, and there was talk about that day that the behaviour of the Ibrox club so incensed Dermot Desmond that he immediately declared we would find a top-class manager for the following season and really, really hurt them.

History has made me dislike that story.

I believe it, but it makes me nervous, because it means that our club’s fortunes pivot on the whims of one man.

I don’t like that idea. I’m not comfortable with it.

Nevertheless, it is impossible not to take a certain amount of satisfaction in the suggestion that their own arrogant behaviour and their own egotism resulted in some of the greatest humiliations ever meted out to clubs playing out of that stadium.

A humiliation which, to some extent, is still going on right now.

These are The Banter Years, and they are glorious.

But on the day of that semi-final defeat, we didn’t know what was in front of us. We didn’t know what was coming down the line. We just assumed our defeat had pretty much wrapped the Scottish Cup up and dropped it off at Ibrox.

That turned out, of course, not to be the case.

Hibs weren’t just good that day. Hibs were excellent. It shouldn’t have taken them until the closing seconds of the game to win it, but again, there is a certain satisfaction to be taken from the fact that it did. Because once again, the Ibrox club allowed themselves to believe that they were on the brink of something, only for it to be snatched away from them in the most heart-wrenching fashion.

My heart has never wrenched less for any club in history.

Except for yesterday.

Because I always felt that we incurred a sort of psychic debt to Hibs that afternoon.

They were the first club of many to follow who burst the Ibrox bubble.

That bubble had encased them for not only that whole season, but for the whole so-called journey. The egotism even survived the previous year’s humiliation of not going up at the first time of asking from the Championship.

We’ll never really know how much damage that afternoon inflicted on their club. I have to think it was substantial. It certainly burst the Mark Warburton bubble fairly early on and revealed his team to be a paper tiger.

It was the first warning, but not the last, that their club was no longer a serious one to be feared. They were just another opponent. That is something a lot of clubs have taken inspiration from since, and will continue to take inspiration from in the future.

There are so many memorable things about that game.

Anthony Stokes, on loan from us, scoring two. Liam Henderson setting up two, including the winner. Alan Stubbs on the touchline, managing the team to the trophy. Then, of course, the pitch invasion at the end by delirious Hibs fans, who were later accused of assaulting Ibrox players and blamed entirely for the subsequent riot when Ibrox supporters charged the pitch to fight with them.

The parallels scream at you, don’t they?

Another club playing the victim card as a way to avoid acknowledging defeat.

Fans in green blamed for everything.

This country really does hate us. The collective us. Any connection with Irishness or Scottishness, with the green and white taint, brings the worst out of some people. Miserable, stinking, repulsive Peepul flinging shit at green-clad fans because they haven’t learned how to handle setbacks.

I can imagine how Hibs fans have felt for this whole season.

I imagine it has been pretty wrenching for them to watch all the hype surrounding Hearts, all the stuff about Hearts being this great side under this great manager and everything else. I suspect Hibs are aware that Hearts, like that Ibrox side, are a paper tiger.

Had they not had two players sent off in the final derby, I’m pretty sure they would have taken something from that game, and Hearts’ title hopes would have been dented long before they ever rolled into Celtic Park. Or Motherwell, for that matter.

Getting denied like that, reduced to nine men and then still losing only at the last knockings, would have hurt like hell.

It would have hurt us. I would have felt that very acutely had it been our club.

So they must have dreaded yesterday afternoon. They must have dreaded the potential outcome of a Hearts title. I’m sure that, with their own performance yesterday not getting them the European spot, there will be a little regret there too.

But I’m glad we brought some joy to their day.

I feel now that we have paid off that psychic debt we have owed for ten years.

How satisfying it must feel to them to know how abject yesterday was for Hearts.

How satisfying it must feel to know that fans who have been taunting them all season long have proved to be a busted flush.

How satisfying it must be to know that the next time they see a Hearts strip on the street, it’s not a note of triumph. It’s a note of defiance, and underneath it all is pain.

I thought some nice thoughts for you guys yesterday.

And right now I send you some love and respect from Glasgow, and to all my friends across Edinburgh with whom I’ve enjoyed some very nice times.

In some ways, that one was for you.

A little bit of the satisfaction I have taken from this whole series of events came from knowing how good you guys must feel.

When you hear talk about how Hearts will be back, and Hearts will be this, and Hearts will be that, I set you just one challenge.

Finish higher than them next season.

I promise you that almost everything you are hearing and reading is nonsense. A Hearts side that has to compete with a European schedule and the expectations of again finishing in the top two is going to crumble like a mummified corpse the second pressure is applied.

Their great season is one of the great myths of Scottish football history. It was built on the back of two calamitous Glasgow club meltdowns and the benefits of having finished so poorly last season that they had no European football schedule to juggle.

Next season, those things no longer apply.

I reckon they go back to being just another team.

That’s where your opportunity is.

Until then, I’m glad that you guys will have a better summer. I’m glad you can walk a little taller and smile with satisfaction whenever you hear talk of the great Hearts effort, and how all of us should feel sympathy for them.

I’m sure I speak for all of you when I say bollocks to that.

They absolutely got what they deserved yesterday.

All the bitching, whining, crying and complaining only makes it sweeter, for Hibs fans and Celtic fans both.

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