Every good football team should be excused for the occasional poor display. Hibernian need a lot of excusing for this match and a stronger word than poor to describe this performance.

Franck Sauzee did not recover from his knock at Parkhead and the defence required a certain amount of rejigging to accomodate his loss but other than that, this was the tried and tested line-up. So finding excuses for this lacklustre showing is somewhat difficult.

I would say that only John O'Neil and Ian Murray had good games with a few others just scraping pass marks. But there is a sizeable list of players who just never got going in this match, particularly amongst the midfield and attack.

Compounding Hibs failure to perform in this match was the fact that the opposition arrived in disarray having lost several first choice players in the last week. Their line-up, with Townsley at centre-half and Twaddle at right back had a real makeshift look about it.

Motherwell completely controlled the first half of this match with Hibs hardly able to get forward at all. They had all the chances, not that there were that many of them, but failed to capitalise on their superiority.

During this half we were so sloppy it was at times unbelievable. We tried to play our normal passing game but there were several things missing for me. 

Number one : The balls out of defence were generally poor. You can understand this to a certain extent as all the players were in unfamiliar positions (Smith played in the centre, Fenwick switched to the right side and Ian Murray came in on the left) and nobody is really going to play the Sauzee role like the man does. Ian Murray did have a good match and looked far more comfortable in this position than he does when asked to play wing back.

Number two : Midfield players seemed very static and unwilling to commit themselves to forward runs. Only John O'Neil really performed for me. Lovell and Laursen were okay and I thought Jack and Latapy were below par. Jack was in fact replaced by Brebner during the second half whilst Latapy stayed on. I would concur with this decision because even when he appears absent during large parts of games, Latapy is still likely to do one or two brilliant things for you.

Number three : Our attack just never got going. Paatelainen was not at the races and Zitelli seemed to find it hard holding on to the ball although his movement was good.

We finally got going about ten minutes into the second half and started probing for openings. McLeish tried all the options with Brebner coming into central midfield and first Libbra and then McManus replacing Paatelainen followed by Zitelli.

I thought Libbra showed some nice touches and did enough to suggest that he is worth keeping. He looked to have a reasonable claim for a penalty when he got to the bye line inside the Motherwell box and then appeared to have his trailing leg taken.

Just when you thought Hibs might at last power ahead and get the all important goal, the opener came at the other end. Don Goodman won a high ball and his knock down found Greg Strong who showed some aplomb as he controlled the ball and then fired past Colgan on the turn.

Hibs response was immediate as they regained parity within a minute. A long throw was headed on and when the ball fell to Russell Latapy lurking in the back post area, he volleyed first time high into the top corner.

There were ten minutes left and Hibs huffed and puffed for a winner but you never really felt it was likely . Full time was greeted by groans from a dissatisfied home support who left feeling like they had hardly seen Hibs play at all.

One further point : I thought referee, Kenny Clark, was so overfussy. He was on live TV, obviously did not want to make any mistake, and seemed to be wanting to break the world record for most freekicks awarded in 90 minutes of football. Maybe that is sour grapes, I guess you can tell that I did not enjoy my Sunday night out.

Hibs Team 3-5-2

Colgan
Fenwick, G. Smith, Murray
Lovell, Jack (Brebner), Latapy, O'Neil, Laursen
Paatelainen (Libbra), Zitelli (McManus)

Subs not used : Franks, Lehmann