Glory Glory to H ..................

Hold on wait a minute, lets get one thing straight....

WHEN THE HEARTS GO UP TO LIFT THE SCOTTISH CUP WE'LL BE THERE ! WE'LL BE THERE !!

Lets get another thing straight, i took as much pleasure watching the highlights of Hibs mugging rangers 3 - 0 at Ibrox again! as i did watching that of Hearts saunter through to the quarter finals against a less than fortunate and less than any good Aberdeen team.
It's not so much that Hibs played out of their skins, i have mentioned this before this season, you don't really need to play out of your skins against Rangers cos they really are pretty crap. They just rode their luck a bit in the first half and Rangers missed opportunities and Hibs took their chances. When they got their noses in front there was only one winner and in the end Rangers were all over the place and a rampant Hibs team could have made it 5 or 6. So much for the wee team fae Edinburgh, lets get back to the main event. I'll wax lyrical about the romance of the cup, welcome respite from the stutteringly mental league campaign.

It is early doors yet, only the quarter finals after all but with both halves of the gruesome twosome out of the competition we have got to fancy our chances.

Here are the ones i remember.......

1976 Hearts v Rangers
Was it 2 - 1 or 3 -1 to the bad guys, i can't recall now.
The bits i do remember are -
Jim Jeffries was playing for Hearts
Dad had a dozen cans of McEwans Export secreted about his personage somehow?
There were 86,000 or something there that day but it seemed like twice as many.
We were beat from the off.

1986 Hearts v Aberdeen
Christ! we got murdered 3 - 0
After the apocalypse of the Saturday before this game, i am certain everyone of us in the crowd that day knew we had nothing left in the tank, physically or emotionally. It was like watching a funeral procession.
Actually I seem to remember we were unlucky in the first 10 or 15 minutes so maybe it could all have been very different.
Aberdeen just didn't lose cup finals around then, nae wonder their supporters still wear drain pipes and mullets.

1996 Hearts v Rangers
Rangers 5 Hearts didnae turn up
This is the one where i drove up from Yeovil for the weekend and you flew over from Toronto, so we could watch the game in the Caley Sample Rooms. The fun lasted about as long as i waited at the bar to get served and the staff were sh*t hot that day.
Actaully I seem to remember we were unlucky in the first 5 minutes and so maybe ........ na screw it, lets just forget all about this one.

hhhhmmmmm I detect a bit of a pattern here, we get to the cup final every ten years - in the year with a 6 in it and then we get gubbed and slope of back to Edinburgh for another decade. This does not bode well for this years campaign, this is after all a decade later, it is a year with a 6 in it. We need the pattern broken, wait a minute.....

1998 Hearts v Rangers
Rangers 1 Hearts 2
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Don't remember a thing!
Jason and Dad missed the game because of the car crash we had on the way to the semi-final. We make up for that this year.


In between these two finals we had the final of the diddy cup in 97 - we nearly took Rangers. Ended up getting beat 4 - 2, but we had got it back to 2 - 2 from 2 - 0 down and they were definitely rattled - until Ally Mcmoist stepped in to kill us off. Still thats just the diddy cup and who gives a flying .... about that.

So to Saturday's game.
The first half was almost a mirror image of the game against Hibs last week.
Shaky start, but survive without losing a goal. Then we get the break and in a frenzy of 20 minutes we kill the game off and force a sending off for the hapless opposition. I wonder what would have happened in either of these games if we had not weathered the initial 15 minutes? Don't think we have had to come back from a goal down at Tynecastle this season.
There is a bit more to this than meets the eye tho -
Hearts were without Hartley due to a 3 match suspension - this is for the petulent kick-out he had at the end of the Celtic game in January. Didn't see it myself, i was too busy watching Craig Gordon try to turn and volley in a last minute equaliser at the time !!
This was troublesome for us but couple that with now regular's, Takiss Fyssas and Rudi Skacel both calling in sick with flu and, if this was last week we really would have struggled, but we have 2 teams now. In came Goncalves ( Gon-Tha-L-Ves i think ) for Fyssas and new record signing Mirsad Beslija for Rudi. So this was maybe just a good opportunity to try out some of these guys.
Beslija is the guy who most noise has been made about and the signing dragged on for ages, it was off it was on. There was more than one agent wanting a cut of the action or something like that. Anyroads 1Million euros and he eventually signed. His debut was pretty quiet all in all until he picked up a knock midway through the second half. Goncalves on the other hand had a great game, this i think might just work out a treat. I am a big Fyssas fan, a left back who is also a cultured football player. One thing he does not have tho is pace so there are games where i worry a wee bit on that side. So if we can mix and match Fyssas and Goncalves dependant on who they will be up against then fantastic.
Beslija is a right sided winger, so Cesnauskis was moved over to the left and he showed his worth by setting up the 2nd goal from that side.
The first goal was set up by Callum Elliott, he took the ball on the right and rolled his foot over it a few times , sheilding from the Aberdeen defender. Absolutely no right to get a cross over, he clipped to the near post for Pospisil to neatly side foot into the roof of the net. Very good finish and great work by Elliott but he should never had been allowed to cross.
The second goal was similar but from the left, Cesnauskis is pretty quick and good with the ball at his feet, he hit the by line and played a cut back low to the front post, Elliott slotted home at the near post. A lot of people raved about Pospisil's goal but i thought Elliott's finish to beat the keeper at the near post was class.
Just before the second goal, Aberdeen had a stone wall penalty turned down, Andy Webster blatantly pulling back Steve Crawford on the six yard line. Hard lines for them i guess.
The third goal was also hard lines for them, a neat through ball for Pospisil to run on to he appeared to be clipped on the edge of the box. Clear goal scoring opportunity so the defender had to go. But then so was the Webster/Crawford affair. Like i said in the match report for the Celtic game, i don't like that rule. A booking fair enough but sending off is harsh. Penalty to Hearts, hard lines on Aberdeen, the tackle was a good 2 feet outside the box. But what they hell, some you win some you lose, the important thing is we took our chances.
In any case even if Aberdeen had scored, we would have put more into the game and beaten them anyroads.
The second half was a bit of a snore, with Aberdeen dead and buried Hearts wisely conserved energy and played the game out.

Dundee Utd away on Tuesday night, and the very luckless Aberdeen are back down to Tynecastle next Saturday on league business. Another week of this new squad training together should make it even tougher on the sheep worry-ers.
At the same time Celtic play Rangers at Ibrox so somethings got to give, my own preferred choice not being a gambling man is for a draw, which will hurt each of them in equal measures - course we need to win both these games to make any sense of that.