Foul Play: The Final Countdown

Bring on the Champions League’ will surely be the unanimous war-cry of all right-thinking football fans as an otherwise largely underwhelming season splutters towards its conclusion. In sharp contrast to last year’s almost unimaginable riches, there hasn’t been a whole pile to get excited over this season.

The remorseless Manchester United machine has just officially wrapped up its 500th title of the last few decades, City having finally thrown in the towel. For about three months now, Sky Sports’ attempts to convince us that the race was still on have had a desperately unconvincing ring.
In normal circumstances, for all its other obvious shortcomings, you could traditionally depend on the Scottish league to provide a tense, knife-edge finish. But this year, Celtic have barely needed to get out of bed to phone in another title, with what has passed for the chasing pack being led by Motherwell and Inverness Caledonian Thistle, neither of whom would have an earthly hope of surviving in the English top flight.
The discerning fan is forced to look further afield to the Champions League semi-finals for inspiration, Jurgen Klopp’s bewitching Borussia Dortmund havong shaken off the handicap of being backed by Foul Play at a whopping 33/1 back in September to somehow make it this far, alongside Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. They now stand only two hurdles away from making me a very happy punter indeed.
I’d already waved goodbye to the wager by the time the quarter-final against Malaga entered stoppage time, with Dortmund in dire need of two goals, which promptly materialised in a manner reminiscent of Man City’s last-gasp miracle last May (an occasion which also boosted the Foul Play coffers by several hundred squid).
With evil genius Jose Mourinho and his Real Madrid crew lying in wait in the last four, I wouldn’t go as far as to say I actually expect Dortmund to win the thing, but if and when they finally go down in flames, I will at least be able to look back and reflect that “they were decent value at 33s.”
There is, of course, another, far more emotionally gruelling engagement on the horizon for Foul Play. Regular readers may have taken note of the fact that Hibernian have scrapped their way through to the Cup Final for the second season in a row. It would be fair to say that last year’s big day didn’t quite go according to plan, turning into a nightmarish bloodbath, with the boys in green mercilessly brutalised 5-1 by our eternal tormentors, the black Hearts of Midlothian. It was an occasion entirely in keeping with the historical trend of Hibs’ involvement in the Scottish Cup: in fact, the last time we won the thing was in 1902. We have reached nine finals since then, and lost every one.
Dispassionate analysis would suggest that surely Hibs have to claim this Holy Grail eventually. In theory it ought not to be all that insurmountable an obstacle: you win a handful of games, get lucky with the draw, catch Celtic or Rangers on an off-day or hope that someone else does, beat whoever’s blocking your path and then waltz off with the trophy. However, for 111 years now, things haven’t worked out quite so neatly. And even in football, 111 years is a pretty long time.
Unanimous consensus among the faithful is that there is some sort of supernatural jinx, some ancient curse at work. Certainly it has long since passed the point where, say, a 5-0 lead in the Final with two minutes left would be viewed as anything other than a perilous predicament, with the result surely about to be declared null and void thanks to an earthquake, an ineligible-player paperwork row, or some other unforeseen Act of God. Decades of torment have conditioned us to be pessimistic to the point of fatalism, and inherently suspicious of referees and linesmen (generally assumed to be sinister Orange-minded agents of justice-perverting skulduggery, depraved loyalist wolves in ref’s clothing). Even goals tend not to be celebrated until we’ve witnessed with our own eyes that the teams are kicking off again at the centre-circle and the ref has actually allowed the strike to stand.
For all these reasons, Hibs devotees are naturally inclined to view the upcoming Final with trepidation. And even if we were inclined to dismiss the ‘jinx’ theory as superstitious bollocks and examine the match purely on its sporting merits, there is no reason to be optimistic. For a start, the opposition this year are Celtic: they have a Double to play for, the overall quality of their personnel is indisputably superior, Rangers’ absence this season has enabled them to pick and choose their battles and peak when they really needed to (beating Barcelona was a case in point) and, with a few cup letdowns in Neil Lennon’s time having given rise to a perception of the Bhoys as chokers, they have plenty at stake.
Recent evidence on the pitch doesn’t offer huge cause for hope, either. I interviewed manager Pat Fenlon in December, when we stood second in the table. The conversation appears to have had a catastrophic effect on Hibs’ season, as indicated by our subsequent slump to ninth place.
The Cup has provided relief, but the recent semi-final against Falkirk, a wholly nondescript crew of mid-table First Division sluggers, wasn’t exactly enjoyable. We were 3-0 down after half an hour. In my time, I have personally witnessed defeats at home to Clydebank (now defunct), Stranraer and Morton, but this was a whole other level of atrociousness, definitively the worst 45 minutes’ football I’ve ever seen from any Hibs team. We could quite easily have been down by four or five.
The half-time whistle seemed to arrive at the right time. Within five minutes of the restart, we had pulled one back, hit the woodwork, had a blatant penalty shout turned down, and I can recall thinking even at 3-1 ‘we’re going to do this’, so visible and total was the shift of momentum. One could sense panic in the Falkirk ranks, a team comprising several teenagers having plainly exhausted themselves, and though it wasn’t until the 78th minute that we conjured up a second, an 8-3 win would have been a wholly accurate reflection of the way the second half unfolded.
As it turned out, it went all the way to extra-time, Leigh Griffiths sealing the deal with an absolute scorcher from the edge of the box to make it 4-3. In many ways, it was sensational Roy of the Rovers stuff, a preposterous comeback which one really ought to celebrate. But so farcical was the defending, it would be unwise to read too much into the victory. It was circus football, and the nature of the recovery should not obscure how irresponsible it was to end up in that position in the first place, nor can it erase the memory of how shockingly awful the display had been for vast stretches.
So, into another cup final. In all honesty, I’m fully prepared for a long, nasty day. Any replication of that semi-final performance would see Celtic take us to the cleaners by a margin too horrible to contemplate. But, as we’ve seen again and again, this is an astonishing sport in which anything can happen. I didn’t attend last year’s final, since the Euros in Poland were two weeks away and it was a straightforward either/or choice. (As it turned out, events at Hampden were every bit as horrific as what unfolded in Poznan and Gdansk). But this year, I have no such excuse.
On May 26, the world will come to a standstill, and 111 years can be exorcised in the space of 90 minutes. Do it, lads.