Hibernian undermined by a culture of indiscipline

THERE was a remarkable show of unity at Hibernian’s training ground outside Tranent yesterday, as manager Pat Fenlon and his players insisted that a newspaper report about Leigh Griffiths had been wide of the mark.

Fenlon declared that the report, which alleged Griffiths had head-butted him and punched assistant manager Billy Brown, was “disgusting” and “downright lies”. The players, both on and off the record, simply said it was wrong.

Fenlon’s anger appeared genuine enough, but it was hard to escape the feeling that it was misplaced, and that the newspaper in question was a convenient outlet for a wrath which should more properly be directed at a group of players who continue to underperform on the pitch and attract bad publicity off it.

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It was hard, too, to escape the feeling that if the team showed as much unity on the field of play as they did in this denial, they would not be in their present plight, just four points ahead of Dunfermline at the bottom of the SPL.

Training-ground bust-ups – Fenlon’s description of the Griffiths incident – happen at other clubs, not just at Hibs. But they do not appear to happen so frequently; and nor are they accompanied by so many other breaches of discipline elsewhere.

Indeed, they have occurred so often with Hibs players over the past five years that a consensus has emerged among former players, coaches and other workers alike: there is a deep-lying problem in the culture of the club. One which has played a part in the demise of several managers, and is now threatening to undermine Fenlon’s attempts first to keep Hibs in the SPL, and then to embark on a sustained improvement.

It may be reassuring to learn that Griffiths “only” had a row which ended with him leaving training early. But it is far from the first time that this particular player has been guilty of insubordination; and he is far from being the only player to have indulged himself in this way.

Of Griffiths’ current team-mates, Garry O’Connor and Martin Scott have also had brushes with authority. And, in recent years, Derek Riordan, Victor Palsson and Darren McCormack are three others who got into trouble away from the game.

One former player speaks for a large strain of opinion on the subject when he traces the malaise to 2007, and the time the squad complained about then manager John Collins to club chairman Rod Petrie. “John was undermined as a manager when the chairman agreed to listen to the players’ complaints,” he said. “What Rod should have done was tell the players to address their complaints to their manager.”

Collins left at the end of 2007, and in the four and a bit years since, Hibs have had four and a bit managers: Mixu Paatelainen, John Hughes, Colin Calderwood, brief caretaker Brown and now Fenlon. The same former player sees that turnover at the top as another factor in the lack of self-discipline shown by some squad members.

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“When a new manager arrives at a club, everyone gets a chance to impress him, and he needs a settling-in period before he can decide which players he rates and which ones he can do without.

“It takes a while for a manager to do that, and to impose his own set of rules on the squad. No Hibs manager over the last few years has had the time to properly put his stamp on things.”

And while managers have come and gone at a rapid rate, there has also been a churn of players from one season to the next. Hughes brought in a raft of new men, who were cast out on the next tide when Calderwood deemed them inadequate. Fenlon has undertaken a similar process, jettisoning underachieving icons of the old regime such as Junior Agogo, and introducing replacements whom he hopes are leaner and hungrier.

That turnover of staff, according to another ex-player, has exacerbated the problem, because there has been no time for a leadership group to coalesce. “Senior players in any changing room are very important, because they set the standard of professionalism,” he said.

“There has been no consistent group of senior players with leadership qualities at Easter Road for some time – really since [former captain] Rob Jones left. That problem was really brought home when Fenlon brought James McPake in on loan and immediately made him captain. That’s nothing against McPake – he looks like he’s the one most likely to have that level of professionalism you need at a club.”

If you accept that there has been too great a turnover, and that not even leaders have been recruited, the next question has to be: are there any flaws in the way in which Hibs decide who to buy in? Yes, there is, according to ex-player No 3.

“There is no real process of due diligence there,” he said. “At some clubs, the chairman or whoever will ensure that players coming in measure up to a certain standard of behaviour. Or at least, if it’s someone who has a bit of a bad record from his younger days, they will look really seriously about whether he has mended his ways. I think Hibs have been too ready to think the best of some players.”

Indeed, at the club’s last annual general meeting, Petrie talked emotively of the club’s willingness to provide a home to some of the game’s waifs and strays. As a humanitarian stance it may be laudable, but it is an approach more in keeping with the club’s 19th-century origins as a charitable concern than with its status as a 21st-century business.

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And, according to one of the former players, it is an attitude which is shared by Sir Tom Farmer. Although the club owner tends to take a back seat, he is said to have intervened to encourage at least one manager to take a pastoral approach to players, especially those from an underprivileged background, when all the manager wanted to do was send them packing.

Again, the sentiment is well meant. But when managers are struggling to impose discipline on an unruly bunch – when they think a boot on the bottom is called for, not an arm around the shoulder – it effectively undermines their attempts.

And sooner or later, that undermines the club. No matter how much charity Hibs have shown to some of their employees, they have shown a lot more to their opponents in recent seasons, which is why they find themselves in their current plight close to the bottom of the table. For a growing number of the club’s supporters, that is a genuine cause for anger, compared to which an overstated report in one newspaper is a trifling matter.

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