SPL Saturday April 30th

Celtic 1

Hibernian 3

0:1 O'Connor 7
1:1 Beattie 59
1:2 Sproule 79
1:3 Brown 81

Att: 58,322

MIB: Kenny Clark

Celtic: Marshall McNamara Balde Varga Valgaeren Petrov Lennon Thompson McGeady Maloney Hartson
subs
Beattie for Maloney 45
Wallace for McGeady 69

Fresh from our Ibrox triumph the team emerges in full laurel-resting mode and is promptly gubbed by a Hibs side that may very well be on the up, but shouldn't have been allowed to control this game the way they did.

For the third home game in a row we couldn't even manage 20 minutes without conceding a ludicrous goal; one back heel 75 yards from our goal shouldn't be enough to take out our entire team, but it was. From that moment we were exposed; although the situation was hardly helped by some sorry defending by both Balde and Varga.

The rest of the first half was huff and puff. Without the speed of Bellamy Celtic looked ponderous in the extreme. The introduction of Beattie at halftime at least injected some pace into the attack and from that point on the Hoops finally started to make Hibs work at the back. Eventually Hartson knocked the ball into Beattie and he cracked in the equaliser.

Excellent, we all thought, another Aberdeen style comeback. The only problem was that having got level the players promptly sat back and waited for Hibs to crumble. They were still waiting for this to happen 10 minutes after the game finished.

Instead Hibs came back into it, assisted by an astute piece of management from Mowbray; with 15 minutes to go he replaced both his forwards, resulting in fresh legs up front running against our, less than pacey defence. The result was two goals in two minutes for Hibs, much wailing and teeth gnashing from the home fans and the whole shooting match is back in the mix again.

Do we not want to win this league or something? We have to hope that Hibs are this motivated come the final day of the season when Rangers come visiting.