Scottish Cup final: Pat Fenlon slams players for lack of hunger, will to win and workrate

ON THE biggest day of his football life, and possibly the most important in the history of his club, Pat Fenlon’s players offered nothing. They capitulated in the face of their greatest rivals and lent the other half of the capital bragging rights for the rest of the century.

Has a team of professionals ever played with such an appalling lack of passion in a cup final, or in any derby for that matter? It’s hard to believe that they have.

Fenlon was certainly making no effort to hide his disgust afterwards. His frustration had boiled over shortly before full-time when he was sent to the stand by referee Craig Thomson.

He later implied it was for over-energetically berating his players, but it was clearly in response to a stiff-arm salute to the maroon ranks in the stands as they delivered a never-ending refrain of “there’s only one Pat Fenlon!”

By the time Fenlon arrived to speak to the media he had barely calmed down.

Half-determined to hide his barely concealed fury, he mixed despair and anger in equal measure. “How do I feel after that?” he asked. “Sick, that’s how I feel. Physically sick. And desperately disappointed. I probably can’t explain how I feel at the moment to be honest.”

What followed was a withering assessment of his players’ merits. This wasn’t an isolated failure, he admitted, but evidence of an underlying malaise at a club which only avoided relegation in the last week of the season.

When asked whether his players got too caught up in the cup final atmosphere and hype, he left them no room to hide.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think this week and last week shows what’s wrong with the football club. There’s just an acceptance [of defeat] and a softness about the place that we need to change.

“We’ve got to sit down and analyse it but obviously there have to be changes in the way the club is and the type of players we look to recruit for the club.”

Fenlon was keen not to let his own sending-off or minor controversies around the penalty obscure the fact that Hibs had been steamrollered by a side displaying the pride and aggression he had hoped to see from his own players.

“I couldn’t see whether it was a penalty from where I was but it was pretty irrelevant in the scoreline of the game,” he said.

“We got back into the game even though we should have been out of it by half-time, and in the break we spoke about how getting the next goal would be important, especially as we’d given away two cheap goals.

“But we started both halves badly. You get to a final and you think players should be busting a gut but we didn’t have that today and that lack of desire and lack of will to win are what’s wrong with the club.

“We didn’t have any players today, and it sums it up that [second half substitute] Eoin Doyle was probably our best player.

“When you send a team out the least you expect is desire and workrate and we didn’t have that today. Sometimes you can have games when you’re not good enough but we didn’t show any real hunger today.”

By the time his frustration at his players’ ineptitude got the better of him in the 89th minute, most Hibs fans had already left.

“My frustration just boiled over,” he said.

“I didn’t [make a gesture to the Hearts fans], I made a gesture in relation to the way we were playing, to the fact that we kept giving the ball away cheaply. If we’d shown a bit more passion we might not be in the position we’re in, so I want to apologise to our own supporters for such a desperately disappointing day for us.

“We got well beaten today by a team that were miles ahead of us – we just have to accept that. It’s a difficult day for everybody, but it’s most painful for the fans. That’s who I feel really sorry for.”