Griffiths and O'Connor

By Graham Barnstaple
April 14 2012

Goals from Leigh Griffiths and Garry O’Connor have seen Hibs through to the Cup final moving them one step closer to ending a 110 year cup hoodoo.

Everybody inScotlandknows Hibs haven’t won the Scottish Cup since 1902, ten years before the Titanic set sail, but they took a step closer to ending that hoodoo by progressing to this season’s final with a win overAberdeenthis afternoon.

They made the best possible start when they capitalised on poor defensive play byAberdeenin the opening stages. The Dons defence failed to clear the ball on a couple of occasion and left O’Connor clear to side foot home unmarked from a Pa Kujabi cross.

Rather than set up an exciting first half the goal did the opposite and the first half was a nervy affair with precious few goalmouth chances.Aberdeenwere slack in almost all areas of the pitch but all Hibs had to show for their efforts were a couple of long range efforts from Leigh Griffiths.

Aberdeenhad to be better in the second half, and thankfully for the large travelling support they were. Only minutes after the break Andrew Considine had a header on target but it was too straight and allowed Stack to save comfortably.

Then just before the break they got back into the game with a stunning goal from Rory Fallon. He brought a long ball down on his chest and struck a sweet volley from 25 yards which left Stack helpess.

The Hibs keeper was forced to limp off after 73 minutes with Mark Brown coming on to replace him, but the action was mainly at the other end after the change of keeper.

With ten minutes to goGriffithshit the outside of the post with an angled shot, but his most telling touch was to come five minutes later. He latched on to a through ball from O’Connor to slide the past the advancing Jason Brown.

Despite five minutes of stoppage time being added onAberdeencould make no impression on the Hibs rearguard and theEdinburghside could look forward to tomorrow’s tie between Celtic and Hearts.