Falkirk hero McHugh has unfinished business in top flight
IT WAS almost worth checking on Friday night just in case a rogue third Kelpie had appeared down by the Forth and Clyde canal. “Many people thought it was a two-horse race and we were the horse that shouldn’t have been there,” said Falkirk manager Peter Houston after the thrilling injury-time success, which means it is they, and not Hibs, who retain the chance of following Rangers from the Championship to the Premiership this year.
In truth, though, anyone who didn’t previously regard this Falkirk side as thoroughbreds surely does now. Apparently picking up pace in the final furlong, they now face Kilmarnock over two legs on Thursday and Sunday for a place in next season’s top flight.
Forget about Hibs for a moment, and their latest instalment of woe, because in truth the events which unfolded on Friday night were entirely predictable if you studied the form. Not only is the Falkirk dressing room possessed with the kind of indefatigable character which would allow them to be christened Scottish football’s version of the Kardiac Kids – aka the 1980 Cleveland Browns – they are blessed with some serious football players too.
The likes of Will Vaulks, Craig Sibbald, Blair Alston and Luke Leahy have been some of Scottish football’s best-kept secrets for a couple of seasons, and that they all still ply their trade at the Falkirk Stadium is one of life’s great mysteries. Then there is Houston, for whom managing the club is a labour of love, yet also the kind of shrewd, experienced figure who – with a couple of years in the Celtic recruitment system under his belt – would excel if ever handed the reins at a bigger club.
Left-back Leahy is not only a graduate of the Strachan Soccer Academy near Coventry but his Irish grandfather Mick was a prizefighter who once defeated boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson in a bout in Paisley. Even he would have been proud of the one-two combination which finally floored Hibs, 53 games into a season which has promised so much but increasingly has become an ordeal. With the Easter Road side leading 2-1 courtesy of the two James Keatings strikes, which had overturned Alston’s opener, first Leahy used that sweet left foot to punish David Gray’s unconvincing defensive header with a fine half volley, then the real knockout blow arrived in the 92nd minute, Bob McHugh turning a volleyed finish off a post after a long Vaulks throw. It was his fifth in six games.
“He [McHugh] has been chapping my door for the last three weeks and asking ‘when am I going to get a start,’” said Houston. “But I didn’t take him out of the team – his injury took him out of the team. I spoke to Stuart McCall and Kenny Black, my mate, when he was released from Motherwell and the one thing about him is he knows how to score goals. He goes in where it hurts.”
McHugh is certainly in the mood for a return to the Premiership after failing to make the most of his time at Motherwell earlier in his career.
“As a striker, when you have been coming on and scoring, you are desperate to get yourself in the team, but I could also see from the manager’s point of view that it was working.”
Houston’s weekend continued with a watching brief at Kilmarnock v Dundee United for BT Sport.
“I was going to the game anyway, but I was as well getting a couple of hundred quid for it too,” he joked.