Right on time
Keatings delivers to widen gap between title rivals, reports Kevin Ferrie
GROUND buzzing, two teams fully committed, a season’s hard work at stake, a packed home support making sure the visitors, aptly clad in navy blue, know where they are and all decided by a James Keatings goal of sublime quality.
This is what a big match at Easter Road is meant to look like.
Brought on just before the interval, having been left out of the starting line-up after under-performing during the previous week’s draw, Keatings also set up Hibs’ opener and brought some needed class to a match that had previously depended on its participants’ commitment to provide what was always decent entertainment.
Falkirk had arrived with rather less reason to be fearful than many visitors to these parts, particularly under current manager Peter Houston who has been in charge on their past six visits during an unbeaten run at Easter Road that had stretched back a remarkable eight years and it had looked as if their instantaneous response to Efe Ambrose’s 75th minute opener would extend that before Keatings made his second telling intervention.
The match was to produce seven yellow cards, but an unhelpful playing surface had contributed to the fact that neither side were able to force the second choice goalkeepers who were between the respective sets of posts into a first half save.
And even when Boyle did well to earn himself a decent shooting opportunity, 14 yards out to the left of goal soon after the break his on-target effort was prevented by Gasparotto from testing Robbie Thomson.
At the other end Baird, meanwhile, shot wide when he should have forced Ross Laidlaw into action after Bob McHugh dinked a delightful ball over the last Hibs defender to give him time and space to line up his effort from just outside the box on the right.
Thomson was finally called upon, diving to his right to push away a decent McHugh strike from 12 yards out after he had shrugged off Darren McGregor to home in on goal from the left.
Hibs, meanwhile, had a string of makeable cases for penalties for what looked like a push by Luca Gasparotto on Jason Cummings, a block by Lewis Kidd in which it looked as if an arm might have been involved and a challenge by Peter Grant on Martin Boyle after the Hibs man appeared to have pushed the ball past him on the edge of the area.
The surprising award of a corner on that last occasion drew a reaction from Neil Lennon that was sufficient for the assistant referee to call Mr Clancy over to have a word with the Hibs manager.
The goals the game deserved then arrived in corporation bus mode, Hibs breaking the deadlock with a well worked set-piece that saw Keatings whip the ball in left footed from 35 yards out wide on the right, at an angle Ambrose read better than anyone else, to earn a free header just five yards out.
If there was little Thomson could do about that one the same defence could not be made for his opposite number two minutes later, Laidlaw getting his hand to the ball but failing to prevent it from squeezing inside his left post after Fraser Aird spotted Craig Sibbald unmarked and chipped a pin-point corner to him which he headed firmly downwards from 10 yards out.
Two minutes into injury time, however, Keatings produced that glorious winner when, opting to push the ball onto his weaker right foot on the left corner of the penalty box before sending the ball arcing beyond Thomson who was again completely helpless.
After asking for confirmation that Morton had also lost, Peter Hibs manager Neil Lennon celebrates his team’s comeback victory with Jason Cummings and Lewis Stevenson Houston, Falkirk’s manager, came close to conceding the Championship title to a Hibs side now 10 points clear.
“It’s more or less guaranteed them it,” he suggested, before instantly correcting himself.
“No, that’s the wrong word,
nothing’s guaranteed in this mad world of football, but it’s put them in a very, very strong position. They can only lose it now.”
To his credit, rather than engage in the usual deflection of such pressure, Lennon concurred, observing: “It’s in our hands now, there is no question of that. Even if Morton win the game in hand there is still a significant gap but we’ve still got a bit of work to do.
“However, I do think psychologically this was a huge result for us after dropping some points last week.”