Petrie insists he has no regrets over summer Colin Calderwood saga

A chill rain was falling on Easter Road as Pat Fenlon’s appointment was announced yesterday – an appointment that might have been made in high summer.

Chairman Rod Petrie had the chance then to say goodbye to Colin Calderwood – and get some compensation for him – when Nottingham Forest and Birmingham City came calling. It could have earned the club around £300,000, and saved four months of grief.

Instead, Petrie hung on to his manager, deciding the time was not right for another change. In retrospect, that decision looks like a mistake, but yesterday Petrie refused to regret it.

“It’s easy to look back and selectively change decisions, but you don’t know the consequences that would have flowed on from that,” he said. “We made the best call that we thought we could at the time. Our job is to make the right decisions for the football club and that’s the job we’ve discharged with the appointment of Pat Fenlon.”

Looking back on previous managerial appointments, however, it is hard to conclude that Petrie has made many right decisions. Calderwood was brought in last autumn when the club lost patience with John Hughes, but he came nowhere close to emulating Hughes’ fourth-place finish. Hughes himself failed to live up to his own early promise, Mixu Paatelainen was unable to ignite the team, and John Collins quit with the team on the slide as he became frustrated by a number of factors.

“You would hope we would have had more success than we have done,” Petrie accepted. “But we have had a degree of success in the recent past.

“The last 12 months have been difficult for Hibernian supporters, and we understand their disappointment. We share their ambition and their passion for the club, and together we can go forward united. I’m sure Pat’s leadership qualities will help draw the club and the supporters closer.”

Results will determine that, but at present there are more than a few Hibs fans who feel the job should have gone to Michael O’Neill, a former player with the club who, like Fenlon, has enjoyed success in the League of Ireland. Acknowledging that not everyone would welcome the appointment of the former Bohemians boss, Petrie nonetheless called for unity.

“I hope the Hibs fans will unite and support the manager who has been appointed,” he added. “Everybody’s got an opinion. Everybody would appoint their manager, pick their team and their formation. It has fallen to the board of directors to make the appointment. We’ve gone about it in a serious and thorough fashion, we’ve spoken to a lot of people and taken soundings, not just on Pat Fenlon but on other candidates, and at the end of the day we have to make a decision.”

As long as he retains the backing of club owner Sir Tom Farmer – and an impassioned speech at the recent annual general meeting from the businessman showed he certainly does – Petrie will not stand or fall by this decision. His track record in appointing managers may be poor, but his financial stewardship of the club has been far more successful, and apparently of greater importance to Farmer.

While it is probable that no more than a small majority of the Hibs support have continued confidence in Petrie, a far smaller minority have actively opposed him.

Petrie did make a concession to the simmering discontent among the supporters when Calderwood left, by announcing that the search for the new manager would be led by managing director Fife Hyland and executive director Scott Lindsay. It was a move which seemed designed to ensure that the flak will be shared should Fenlon flop. Still, having taken a back seat during that search, the chairman was once again in the thick of things yesterday. Managers may come and go at Easter Road, but Rod’s reign, like winter in Narnia, remains the great unchangeable.