Hibs 1 - 0 Kilmarnock: Riordan goal adds sparkle to occasion as Hibs return to winning ways

Published on Sunday 7 March 2010 23:17

RELEARNING winning ways comes first. Rediscovering your best form tends to take a little longer.

After picking up just two points from their past five matches, Hibernian badly needed a victory. The style in which they got it may have been unconvincing, but this was surely one of those games where the result mattered more than the performance.

Having said that, Hibs did just about deserve to get the better of Kilmarnock. The free-kick award from which Derek Riordan scored was debatable, but the home side were the more positive attacking force, and Hibs goalkeeper Graham Stack barely had to exert himself.

At the other end, Lee Robinson, who came on early in the game after Cameron Bell was injured in a collision with Sol Bamba, had to be at his most alert to keep Kilmarnock in contention, particularly in the second-half. He was beaten with 20 minutes to go by Anthony Stokes when the flag had already gone up for offside, then again by Riordan, but before that had pulled off several impressive saves. Two or three came from Stokes, by far the sharpest striker on the field, but at the time the most significant looked like being from Abdessalam Benjelloun's penalty.

The Moroccan's failure to score from the spot-kick, awarded after he had been brought down by Manuel Pascali, could have had a debilitating effect on Hibs. A couple of weeks ago, when they were on a losing streak of three games, it may well have done so. But they are steadily regaining their self-belief, and rather than being halted in their tracks by Robinson's stop, reacted to it in determined fashion.

It took long enough, all the same, for them to impose themselves. Their play in an infuriatingly inconsequential first-half was a combination of the nervous and the negative, with Lewis Stevenson in particular appearing incapable of a forward pass. The patient build-up is one thing, but what Hibs were doing for most of those first 45 minutes was patiently moving the ball back from a decent attacking position to Bamba or Chris Hogg and then further back to Stack.

Kilmarnock were not too concerned about these aesthetic niceties. Outnumbering Hibs in the middle of the park, they had the better of the first half-hour, and might have taken the lead when Chris Maguire turned Bamba in the box only to blast his shot into the side netting.

Bamba and Alan Gow had to go off midway through the half with shoulder and hamstring injuries respectively, and Paul Hanlon and Benjelloun proved more than adequate replacements. The first period ended with Hibs beginning to play more positively, and Robinson had to be at his most alert to deal with a speculative shot by Stokes from wide out on the right.

The Irishman continued to look dangerous after the interval, and, having scored from the spot last week in the draw with St Johnstone, might have been a better choice to take the penalty. But when he is on the field Benjelloun apparently remains the first choice, and despite failing to score said after the game that he still expected to take the next one.

Just after Stokes had the ball in the net, Hibs manager John Hughes, aware that the three points were there for the taking, threw on Danny Galbraith for Stevenson. At the same time Kilmarnock replaced Mehdi Taouil with James Fowler, and it was the two substitutes who unwittingly combined to bring about the goal. Galbraith was heading straight towards goal when he went down around 25 yards out following a challenge by Fowler. Kilmarnock thought Galbraith had tripped before any contact was made, but the referee thought otherwise, and from the free-kick Riordan curled the ball high into the net.

"A goal fit to win any game," Kilmarnock manager Jimmy Calderwood said later.

Hughes was pleased with it too, reserving his displeasure for the yellow boots worn by Galbraith. The substitute, however, explained there was sense behind his fashion faux pas. "They were the only ones in the shop of the kind I wear. I'd done an A-Z in the programme a few weeks ago and they asked about coloured boots: I said as long as they weren't yellow. A week later I got my girlfriend to go and buy me a pair and they were the only ones left. She works in a Nike shop so she gets good discount. I'd rather get them than pay an extra 50 per cent and get a different colour."

Hibs' next opponents are Ross County in the Scottish Cup quarter-finals, a competition Hughes has called the Holy Grail for the club. Should they go on to lift the trophy, you suspect the manager would not mind if the whole team were wearing pink boots with purple polka dots.