What an interesting afternoon's football. The Scottish League Cup Final and once again the wee team failed in a cup final, poor Hibernian built themselves up to expect a win and got beat with the winning goal coming in the last couple of minutes. Oh dear oh dearie me.
Normally on such occasions, and there have been may, I would laugh at my Hibby friends, today however has been different. I just could not laugh at a man who was so down he needs to be on suicide watch as the bus makes its long slow way back from Glasgow into Leith.
As a supporter of the Big Team, the Heart of Midlothian, I understand the emptiness, anger and confusion that follows a defeat in a major tournament, after all we have been there rather too often ourselves. Indeed when I started to follow football the Heart of Midlothian won this cup themselves in 1962 ans we all expected this behaviour to continue, it didn't! Indeed in spite of many attempts at both cups and the league itself we were bereft for many years. Woe and dissolution are not unknown down Gorgie way.
It was one sunny afternoon while standing in Edinburgh's Princes Street waiting for the open top bus carrying the victorious Scottish Cup Winning Heart of Midlothian side of 1998 that our agony ended. That day the thousands gathered knew only one phrase, "I've waited forty years for this!" And many of us had! Forty long despairing years and at last we broke through. Indeed we have since won the cup a couple of times again and it has become a bit of a bore really. The Heart of Midlothian of course won the Scottish Cup, the oldest football trophy in the whole world, poor Hibernian today failed to capture the League Cup, the second of the cup trophies one they have managed to win within living memory.
The Scottish Cup Hibernian have indeed had their name carved on this prestigious trophy however the last time this occurred was in 1902 a day so long in the distant past that had any of the players survived until today they would be 114 years of age older than they were on that day. Few if any have survived.
Man has flown, even to the moon, discovered radio waves, television, microwaves, and fought two world wars and suffered severe depressions worldwide yet in all this Hibernians failure to win the Scottish Cup has been a failure they cannot endure. Still across the city we find it a giggle.
So my friend sleeping on the bus home, enduring bad dreams of loss and pain, will not have to endure my sniggers at his teams failure again. My emotions were touched at his cry of "Doom, Doom!" All the way along the M8. All is loss and his wife and child, who will suffer also as he is being raised in this sad support of Hibernian, will see their man reduced to a shattered shell yet again. We all know what this pain is like, we have all been there, just be glad it is him and not us.Those horses will have clipped clopped back into the garage with the Hibs open top bus once again.
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