Shinniepays thepricefor sayingBairns werebottlers
HIBS may have reached a point of no return as they look pretty much untouchable at the top of the Championship – but there was a price to pay for their 2-1 win over Falkirk.
Andrew Shinnie was forced off as he was in the wars with the Bairns stars who gave him bit of treatment.
It seemed clear they had taken exception to Shinnie’s prematch observations that Falkirk had “bottled it” in last season’s play-offs.
He wasn’t the only Hibs star who was targeted, though.
A blatant Luke Leahy trip on Martin Boyle was followed by John Baird squaring up to Shinnie, who was involved in a series of collisions and had to leave the field just before the interval with a shoulder injury.
Mark Kerr, Falkirk’s veteran defender, pretty much confirmed the assertions.
“I think Bairdy just saw his chance to have a go at one of the Hibernian boys who said something to the papers,” he said. Shinnie certainly seemed to get a fair bit of special attention, but if so Falkirk’s punishment for taking matters into their own hands pretty much fitted the crime – because it gave James Keatings an entire half in which to respond to having been left out of Hibs’ starting line-up and he could not have taken it more hungrily.
The quality of the ball he whipped in from a free kick, meant that once former Rangers defender Efe Ambrose had picked the right running line he could not have had an easier task of opening the scoring with a header from inside the sixyard box.
Keatings was then to take his share of the blame for the equaliser registered by the head of Craig Sibbald which Ross Laidlaw probably should have done more to keep out at the near post following a corner from the right.
“A few of the boys were having a go at Ross but I told them it wasn’t Ross’ fault … it was me that lost Sibbald,” Keatings acknowledged.
“It shouldn’t have happened to be honest. The manager agreed but he was happy that I did score later on. That maybe got me off the hook.”
KEATINGS laughed when asked whether he would have been quite so noble had he not resolved matters as he did.
He noted that failing to do would only have resulted in a shaming by video in midweek, but such discussion was in any case rendered hypothetical by a winner of sublime style from a shot on goal that he felt goaded into two minutes into injury time. “Every time I got the ball I was going to the byeline and the last time two Falkirk players doubled up on me,” Keatings explained.
“I heard them saying that ‘he’s all left foot’ and it stuck in my head. The next time I got the ball I went on my right and caught it with my bad foot and it’s flown in the net.”
Following a rainbow-like parabola, from the left corner of the penalty box over and beyond Robbie Thomson, it pretty much killed off any chance second-placed Falkirk had of claiming this season’s championship. Admittedly it is conceivable that with two cracks at the leaders in the next three weeks and a game in hand against bottom side St Mirren, Morton could yet close the 10-point gap sufficiently to ask one last question of them.
However, Hibs responded to their own reputation of being perennial ‘bottlers’ in the cup final last year and can consequently now pursue a double this season in relatively relaxed fashion.
Although, they may have to do so without Shinnie.