Hope is a good thing in football
The Scottish
Cup can be likened to Christmas as it’s the time of the year when even fans of
lower league teams can get carried away, their usually realistic approach to
their team’s position in the league suddenly being engulfed by a wave of
optimism, a feeling of ‘anything can happen in the cup’.
Edinburgh
City are jostling with Cove Rangers at the top of Ladbrokes League Two and
there will be those who say that getting promotion to League One is the club’s
priority this season. For other clubs, however, the William Hill Scottish Cup
is a means of escape from a mundane season of mediocrity. An abject performance
against Brechin City or a dire showing against Stirling Albion can be forgotten
if your team manages a great win in the cup.
Hope enables
fans to dare to dream. Clubs much bigger than Edinburgh City have endured more
than a century of Scottish Cup failure. Supporters of Hibernian never stopped
dreaming of seeing their team lift the famous old trophy even if, up until
2016, they hadn’t won it since 1902. Their win over Rangers three and a half
years ago finally saw their dreams come true and, while I say this through
gritted Jambo teeth, I was genuinely happy for some of my Hibee pals of decades
acquaintance who had nearly given up on seeing their team win the cup (it would
churlish of me to point out that while Hibs have won the Scottish Cup once in
the last 100 years, Hearts legend Rudi Skacel won it twice in the pace of six years…)
Who’s to say Edinburgh City can’t pull off a cup shock by knocking Hamilton Accies out of the cup? After all, in that season when Hibs won the trophy Accies were trounced 4-1 at Annan Athletic. Who knows what will happen on 18th January?
To quote Andy Dufresne, the lead character in that brilliant film The Shawshank Redemption – “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies.” So long as the City players don’t dwell on another quote from the film – “There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret.”