The underdogs and a bid for immortality

IT WAS all fitting into place. Hibernian, the self-styled coolest football team on the planet, were on form, on the march to a semi-final at Hampden, and looking good to break their 105-year-old Scottish Cup hoodoo.

But the city slickers had reckoned without the pluck of little Ross County, with the Highlanders first earning a 2-2 draw in their quarter-final at Easter Road and then stunning the men in green in the replay at Victoria Park with a last-minute winner to earn the right to face the other men in green, Celtic, at the national stadium this afternoon.

Some 7,000 Ross County fans will be in the ground for the match, hoping their side can emulate the feat of one of the other semi-finalists, Raith Rovers, who famously beat the Glasgow giants in the 1994 League Cup final. Curiously, only 5,000 people live in County's home town of Dingwall, so their fame has spread far and wide. It is certainly a case of "last one out, switch off the lights" and, presumably, switch on the burglar alarms.

And on Sunday, Rovers will also be hoping to perform a giant-killing act by defeating a resurgent Dundee United side. The Kirkcaldy team is famously supported by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and could it be that there will be two victories against the odds for Fife men? Of course, a mainstay of the triumphant 1994 side was a man whose name Mr Brown could hardly forget: Cameron.