The first piece which I wrote for this edition was, due to a planned short holiday, with the MHHM editorial team by the first week in March. However the exciting events of the past week or so have pushed back the publication date, giving me a welcome opportunity to take into account the BW situation.

The first piece which I wrote for this edition was, due to a planned short holiday, with the MHHM editorial team by the first week in March. However the exciting events of the past week or so have pushed back the publication date, giving me a welcome opportunity to take into account the BW situation.

My original piece was a self-pitying whine that the Patron Saint of Good Timing had clearly been in the pub when my lovely partner had decided Goa was the place to be during Cup Final week. Self-pity became a sort of relief around 10.00pm on 14 March 2004 (India is 5½ hours ahead of the UK) as a stream of text messages confirmed that yet again an open top bus festooned with green ribbons would not be required beyond the Maybury. Another Cup Final, another humping. I was a broken man, but at least I hadn't been there to see it. A tuk-tuk driver in Arpora is keeping warm during the monsoon in a smart new Hibs cup final polo top.

The BW affair will undoubtedly be well covered elsewhere in MHHM. Although I would not wish any worker out of a job, BW's departure is not an occasion of personal regret. Most of us starting a new job get a probation period of 6 months, or a year if we are lucky, to show that we can cut it. The Hibs Board gave BW 2½ years (on a salary of £150k+) to tinker with this club we all love. His team selection was pish, his tactics were pish, his substitutions were pish, his eye for a decent player was pish and his attitude towards the fans was pish. With apologies to the late Douglas Adams - so long, Bobby, and thanks for all the pish.

The excuses which BW produced after each poor result (there were a lot of poor results) were never less than imaginative and at times bordered on the bizarre. Given his most recent gem, a claim that players needed to be married to win cups, Plymouth Argyle should perhaps check they have a working tele-link to the planet Zob.

It would be hypocritical to ignore entirely BW's ex-Hunnery (sorry, Simon), but the claims of the Scottish sports meedja and the BBC Goatscene regulars (of which more later) that he was driven out of ER by the fans solely because of this are wildly exaggerated. Most of us would not have cared whether BW was a Hun, a Martian or even English, had he achieved an iota of progress with the team. But the reality is that he failed miserably. Let us not forget either that he was not sacked by Hibs, and he is not languishing on the dole. The Hibs Board may have encouraged him not to hang around (Petrie gets something correct at last), but BW voluntarily left the club for a better paid job.

The Scottish sports meedja is largely a cosy club of West of Scotland based (and biased) pals, so it is unsurprising that their sympathies have largely been with BW and that they have made little mention of his failure on the park. But as Hibbie journalist Ian Bell, a rare dissenting voice, commented in the Sunday Herald:

"Plymouth Argyle may be powering their way to Division 1 … but they have a funny idea of what constitutes success. If successful management is failing to steer a biggish club into the top six in one of Europe's weakest leagues, and doing so repeatedly, Bobby Williamson is their man. If, equally, success is seeing off the Old Firm in a cup tournament only to blow the final idiotically, the Hibs manager is a hero in the making for an ambitious English club"

That sums it up. At the time of writing it is not known who will be taking over at ER, but all of the names which are seriously in the frame have the potential to do better than BW and, at least as importantly, will understand the Hibs culture better. Ian Bell again:

"Hibs fans have very precise ideas about how football should be played even, as is often the case, when you are losing. It is a tradition that dates back 50 years and more, and one that managers ignore at their peril."

BW consistently ignored that tradition just as he ignored us, the fans, much of the time. He never made the effort to understand why Edinburgh is not Glasgow or why Hibs fans are not Killie fans. The Hibs Board did not finish off BW. The Hibs fans did not finish off BW. Ultimately, BW finished off BW.

Chain up the sheep

But returning to the original theme of this piece (yes, there is one), my personal Saint of Good Timing also ensured that I was not at ER for February's Derby game either, being forced instead to spend a glorious sunny weekend on Skye in the five star luxury of the island's premier seafood restaurant. No-one on Skye was actually queuing early outside the pubs to be sure of catching the Derby game, possibly because the few islanders who actually follow football are Huns, except on Barra or South Uist where they follow the Sellick. At least they don't chain up the swings on Sundays on Skye as they do on certain other islands. Perhaps they should chain up the sheep though ? seems to me that they present a greater temptation. Well, I certainly saw a couple of wee crackers!

The Hibs Babes might have done better if they had been allowed to run with the ball occasionally, but they did rise to the bait too easily when Hearts needled them. I have no problem with Hibs' players mixing it a bit, particularly against the Hearts who are past masters at it, but not when they descend into the gutter to do so. Hibs may have more talented young players but Hearts have greater consistency and organisation. I would still rather watch an inconsistent Riordan, Brown, Thomson and company in full flow sometimes than watch the Hearts' journeymen grind out results every week though. Not much point in getting to Europe just to embarrass yourselves first time out. Cheeky wee Bordeaux, anyone? 

Mark practices his advanced diving techniques during the pre-match warm up

Pressley and Levein, gobby as always after the game, both reckoned Hearts should have won the game (they would) but the reality is that Hearts have only scored once against Hibs this season - and from a dodgy penalty at that, so it doesn't really count. And Jammy Hartley wasn't unlucky with his free kick (courtesy of another mysterious loss of spatial awareness by de Vries). The TV replay showed that Daniel Andersson got his fingers to it to push it on to the post.

The maroon's a balloon

Not actually being at Easter Road, I had the rare pleasure of listening to Sandy Clark's commentary on a Derby game. I suppose I should be grateful. I only have to suffer 90 minutes of Clark's verbal diarrhoea in those weeks I bother to watch whichever half of the Evil Twins are playing away from their lair. But some poor woman is married to the ex-Airdrie reject and has to listen to the premium grade garbage which issues unprompted from this Voice of a Football's fat puss all of the time. If there is a God (as a long?suffering Hibbie, not a view to which I subscribe), he or she was guilty of over-specification when giving Clark an arsehole, because the shite all comes out of his mouth.

Clark is so overtly biased that it is hard to take much offence at his nonsense. Most commentators agreed that the Hearts penalty was a pretty soft award by a referee whose handling of the game was even by his own low standards incompetent and inconsistent. De Vries had hit the ball too far in front of him when he decided to turn in on goal and go down like a sack of spuds on the merest of contacts from Murdock (good to see that those Stilian Petrov training videos which de Vries got a couple of Christmases ago have not gone to waste). However, "stonewall penalty" was the considered verdict of the maroon buffoon. He had been equally emphatic in dismissing two stonewall (well, to everyone else) Hibs' claims at Fir Park a few weeks before. At least Clark's bias is consistent.

Murdock was undoubtedly conned by de Vries into conceding the penalty, but he is hardly the first SPL defender to suffer from the ease with which the Dutch Diver goes to ground, and he does fall down very readily for such a big man. His "penalty" against Hibs was the second award within 4 days, one securing a point and the other snaring all three points from the Mutton Molesters. Of course a fair referee (is there one in the SPL?) would have booked de Vries' for persistent fouling long before the start of the second half. Not Chicken McCurry though. He ignored one particular piece of play?acting which would have seen any other player outside the Old Firm booked for ungentlemanly conduct (or blatant cheating to use a more accurate description). He also managed to miss a clear trip on Scott Brown a couple of feet outside the box.

MOTM? That'll be Pressley then

It is always well worth a punt on Man of the Match when Clark is doing a game involving the Hearts, as the odds are automatically halved. Well, he isn't going to nominate a Hibs player, is he? Despite Riordan's wonder goal, Clark made Stephen Pressley MOTM for the Derby. Pressley hadn't played that badly, but only a donkey or a bigot could have overlooked Riordan's strike as the one gem in a poor game. Pressley? You could have phoned that one in ahead, Sandy. Clark was at it again the following weekend for the Killie?Hearts game, giving Andy Webster MOTM almost at the moment Killie equalised. At least it was not Pressley again (aye, I know he wasn't actually playing, but he was in the stand, which might have been enough for Clark).

Pressley and teammates.  The closest Hearts will ever get to a Famous Five.

Clark has never nominated a Hibs player for MOTM that I can recall. Apart from ignoring Riordan's wonder goal, it was almost funny listening to him struggling not to nominate the same Hibs player in the Aberdeen game at Pittodrie before Murdock let him off the hook with that blunder and he was able to nominate Scott Booth for little more than sticking away a soft penalty near the end. And every Saturday afternoon Clark comes on Goatscene at 5.00pm either to gloat openly at the Hibs result or to give his expert opinion that the Hibs penalty claims (rarely given anyway by the Goatmolester in Black, coincidentally often called Clark as well) were "never penalties".

Imagine if Clark had been covering Celtic's slaughter of Hearts at Parkhead earlier in the season.

"Who's your man of the match this week then, Sandy?"

"Well, Rob, Stilian Petrov played well and of course that man Larssen, but for me the man who stood head and shoulders above them all, a man who could be the next Protestant Pope, a man who could probably beat Tony Blair at the next General Election, a man who is about to invent the cure for AIDS, is Hearts' Stephen Pressley!"

"No kidding, Sandy?"

Elvis really is alive and Sandy Clark is in permanent residence up his arse.

Maybury's aye, Maybury's no

Clark's diatribe about Scott Brown's tackle was a wonder to hear. Brown, having been on the end of some pretty rough treatment himself from the Hearts defenders and never one to turn the other cheek, admittedly went in pretty hard but Clark had him up there alongside that Argentinean guy Rattin as the greatest perpetrator of violence on a football park since - well, since the last Hibs player who went in a bit over-enthusiastically in a Derby match. Incidentally, I see that Maybury was let off by Lodge 666 Hampden for his assault in the same game, possibly because Hibs were unable to produce a valid death certificate for Scott Brown, thus leaving Hearts with no case to answer.

Sandy Clark - failed player, failed manager, now failed pundit.

Clark dismissed Robbie Neilson's two-footed career wrecker of a challenge as "six and two threes" (presumably because he finds the more usual cliché "six and half a dozen" too arithmetically challenging). His expert opinion was that because Neilson had been too inept actually to make contact, it was not as serious an offence. But then the gospel according to the maroon buffoon is that every Rangers/Hearts challenge is a 50/50 ball while every other tackle is Assault to Serious Injury and Danger of Life.

The guy seems oblivious to the fact that Kisnorbo, Maybury, Robbie Neilson, Neil "Mad Dog" McFarlane and even St Elvis of Pressley are hardly shrinking violets. In fact he seems to have forgotten what an animal of a player he was with Rangers (aka the big Hearts), Hearts (aka the wee Rangers), and latterly Airdrie (aka the Hun retirement farm).

Hounded out by Hun haters?

Clark truly excelled himself though on BBC Scotland on Saturday 17 April 2004, when BW's departure was still impending rather than reality. Hell knows what possessed anchorman Richard Gordon to invite Clark to give his views on the situation. Gordon (himself an Aberdeen fan who has somehow sneaked past the BBC Sport vetting process despite not having the normally mandatory OF background), cannot have been unaware that Clark despises the Hibs and never knowingly misses a chance to talk them down. A balanced view of the BW situation was never in prospect, and so it proved.

Dougie - He's a Real Gone Kid

Clark's rant - given his tone and ferocity, no other description fits - was to the effect that BW was hounded out by a combination of the Hibs Board and the Hibs fans. According to Clark, the Board had more or less constructively dismissed BW (not that Clark knows or used such big words). And the fans had never accepted BW because of his ex-Rangers background.

Clark may just have a point as regards the Board. BW's contract re-negotiations were made very public, though it has to be said that the reduction in his terms came about largely as a consequence of BW's sustained failure to deliver anything resembling success on the park. But BW's lack of acceptance by a section of the Hibs support (it was by no means unanimous) was far more a result of his demonstrable shortcomings as Hibs manager than of his having been tainted with the Blue Lizard of Hunnery in a past life.

The Hibs support divided broadly into pro- and anti- Bobby camps. The view of the pro- camp was that he was a decent manager who needed more time and fewer injuries to players. The anti- camp argued that the guy showed none of the footballing aptitude needed to manage a pub team. At the end, even BW's few remaining apologists had accepted that the relationship had irretrievably broken down. It may be true that BW was never loved by the majority of the Hibs fans, even those who genuinely if misguidedly believed that he was a competent manager. But the lack of affection was mutual. BW never tried to hide his disdain for the Hibs fans and their opinions. It is hard to see how the Hibs support could have forced the guy out, given that he had spent 2½ years largely failing to acknowledge our right to exist.

But Clark made no attempt on Radio Scotland to analyse the dynamic of this complex situation, preferring to resort to crude denigration of all things Hibbie. It is clearly easier to claim that one of your pals in the cosy, clubby, Weedgie-dominated world of Scottish football has been done over by East Coast bias than to acknowledge a more universal truth - that when you are paid a lot of money to do a job and you fail to meet the required standard, sooner or later the consequence will be a P45 in your hand.  

Goatscene: past its sell by date

One wonders why the BBC tolerates Clark, far less gives him a contract. Apart from his risible and embarrassing bias against everything not OF or maroon, his comments on the game itself often make one wonder whether he is watching another game altogether on his monitor. But among a Goatscene line up which includes Dougie Donnelly (better suited to flogging sofas), uber-agent Gordon Smith (only there to flog his players) and Dougie Vipond (deserving of a damn good flogging just for being in Deacon Blue once upon a time), Clark is hardly a turd intruding in a field of tulips.

The whole incestuous Goatscene set-up is well past its sell-by date. It has been great fun this season watching the usual suspects trying to put a brave face on the successive nails being hammered into the coffin of the Huns' season horribilis, but there are another 10 non-OF clubs in the SPL (not to mention the lower leagues) and we non-OF fans deserve a more inclusive form of football coverage for our licence fee.

Really the BBC ought to be able to conjure up something better than the retirement farm for has-beens and never-weres which Goatscene and Radio Scotland's football coverage have become (or maybe always were). A start would be to dispense with the services of the current bunch of OF sycophants and to employ decent journalists and presenters.

But short of the revolution which Scottish football in general badly needs, we are probably stuck with the likes of Clark's moronic, bigoted rantings for the foreseeable future. On one level, Clark is wholly deserving of the widespread ridicule he regularly attracts with his ill-informed and prejudiced commentary. But on another level, his wages are paid from our licence fees. By any criterion that is a scandalous waste of our hard-earned cash.