Ivan Sproule hopes to be on his way from misery to happiness today

Hibs winger aims to go one better after three semi-final defeats

IT IS a hard tie to predict – and easy to see why. Aberdeen and Hibernian have met three times already this season, and produced only one goal between them. If today’s Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden ends up in a score such as 5-3 or 4-2, that is far more likely to be the outcome of the penalty shoot-out, not the result after 90 or 120 minutes.

Aberdeen may be slight favourites by virtue of their modestly superior league position, but it could be Hibs who take more confidence from those three SPL meetings, two goalless draws and a 1-0 win for Craig Brown’s team. In a season which has seen them display chronic defensive shortcomings, at least the Edinburgh side appear to have the knack of restricting Aberdeen to no more than the odd goal.

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What is more, those shortcomings are nowhere near as glaring as they were a month or two ago. Against Motherwell at the start of this week Hibs defended competently, confidently, and, most importantly, as a team. They conceded a goal towards the end of the game, which ended 1-1, but at last they looked like a side with some purpose to them.

Of course, Aberdeen reached this stage of the competition thanks to a more impressive performance against Motherwell – a 2-1 win in the Fir Park quarter-final. And, while they have played unconvincingly in recent league games, they enjoyed a confidence-boosting win last weekend against Dundee United. What is more, although there is little between the teams on current form, it is Aberdeen who have by far the better record in the Scottish Cup. They won it for the first time all of 45 years after Hibs’ last victory in 1902, and have now lifted it seven times in all compared to their opponents’ two.

For Pat Fenlon, however, Hibs’ agony in this tournament is irrelevant. The way the manager looks at it, this is his first crack at the cup rather than the club’s latest bid to end a century and more of futile toil in the competition.

Ivan Sproule, too, perceives this match primarily as a chance to improve on recent experiences. Having been on the losing side in three semi-finals during his first spell with Hibs, the winger is desperate to go one better today.

“This will be fourth time lucky if we reach the final,” said Sproule, who was on the losing side against Dundee United, Hearts and Dunfermline in the three years from 2005. “I’ve had a few unlucky experiences in semi-finals, so it would be a monkey off the back.

“If I can’t take a few experiences out of them I’ll never learn. I’ll just use all that experience I’ve gained and hopefully crack it this Saturday, get one step further and get to a cup final.

“[The 4-0 defeat by Hearts] is probably the sorest one, because it’s your derby rivals and it hurts the fans that wee bit more. But no matter who you lose to in the semi-final. . . Nobody remembers beaten semi-finalists. So we want to get over that hurdle, get to the final and have a crack at it.

“This game is 50-50, and it will come down to who gets a wee bit of luck or who wants it more. There are all these ways of looking at it, but we’re just looking at it that we’ve got a chance, as great a chance as Aberdeen, to make that final, and everybody in our changing room at the minute is fully focused on making that final. There’s always a lot at stake in a semi-final, and I’m sure both teams will have a game plan. I’m sure it will be a cagey enough affair and I don’t think any team will be going gung-ho at it from the first minute.”

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The fear of losing is often the factor which turns semi-finals into dour encounters, but sooner or later today it is likely that the desire to win will take over. Sproule, for one, is possessed of a sense of adventure which means he rarely sticks to the script for the length of a game, and Aberdeen too can be expected to throw increasingly more effort into attack if the game is still deadlocked going into the last half-hour.

Having first joined Hibs seven years ago, Sproule is more painfully conscious than his manager of the club’s marathon run of failure in the cup. “I don’t know how they haven’t done it,” he said. “Because when you’ve been around the club for a while you soon learn about the previous teams that they’ve had and some of the good players that could never get their hands on it.

“No disrespect to some of the teams that have done it. But even in my lifetime you see some that have won it and think how have they got it?

“It takes a lot of luck. The cup’s all about luck, and you need the break of the ball and decisions to go your way. So let’s just hope the gods are looking down upon on us and they can nudge us a wee bit closer to the final.”

Aberdeen will have exactly the same hope, but neither team can afford to rely too much on chance. That coveted place in the final should go to whichever side is able to shrug off that fear of failure and prove more willing to assert itself.