Hampden Park witnessed redemption for Jason Cummings as Hibernian moved to within a game of ending an appalling Scottish Cup run but the man of the moment, and this match, was to prove an unlikely one.
Conrad Logan’s last professional outing was in December 2014, for Rochdale in a League One match against Notts County. The goalkeeper suffered a serious injury in that encounter and was released by his parent club, Leicester City, the following summer.
A suspension to Hibs’ first-choice keeper, Mark Oxley, triggered a dilemma for the manager, Alan Stubbs. He turned to Logan on a deal until May; first glances of the 29-year-old Irishman were not promising, with his frame more resembling prop forward than football player. How Logan enjoyed the last laugh. By the end of an utterly dire semi-final, he had made crucial stops and, most pertinently, batted away Dundee United’s first two penalties of a shootout.
Hibs are back in the final, where they will make another bid to win the Scottish Cup for the first time since 1902. The Wright brothers had not even been in the air yet.
“Conrad thanked me on the way off the pitch,” said Stubbs. “I told him it should be the other way round. People spoke about him not playing for a while but that didn’t concern me; goalkeepers are different to outfield players.”
Semi-finals often serve up grim fare but this one moved to new levels. The standard of football was dire, save the Hibs midfielder Liam Henderson, who looked two steps ahead of every other outfield player.
Hibs opened as the brighter side, Cummings afforded the perfect chance to endorse that superiority, from the penalty spot, after 28 minutes. Coll Donaldson was judged to have handled a Fraser Fyvie cross. Cummings tried to be clever, too clever, by chipping the ball goalwards. The spot-kick flew over the crossbar, much to Cummings’s embarrassment.
“I wanted to strangle him, initially,” said Stubbs with only half a smile. “I had gone into the toilet and was waiting to hear a cheer. All I heard was a groan but I didn’t know what he had done until I got back to the bench. I will be telling him not to do that again in semi-finals and finals.”
United clawed their way back into proceedings from there. Logan had already saved well from the advancing Billy McKay before repeating that, a minute before the interval. The second half proved a nonevent. As Stubbs rightly acknowledged: “It got to the stage where you had two teams who just didn’t want to lose.”
United’s Ryan Dow had an effort cleared from the goalline by Paul Hanlon with 25 minutes to play. In extra time, Logan smartly denied John Rankin and Henri Anier. The Hibs goalkeeper had played his penalty part before Cummings once again took the ball. This time, the finish was orthodox and clean to secure the Hibs win.
“I am totally gutted for the boys,” said Mixu Paatelainen, United’s manager. “We were the better team for long spells, we controlled the game but if you don’t score you cannot win. We have seen it all season.”
