Marink Reedijk earns vital Hibs credit with Hearts derby win

Any win would have been welcome after four matches without one, although nobody among the thousands of Hibs supporters travelling west saw this as just another game. The club had faced Hearts four times at the national stadium and lost them all, so that record was always going to be mentioned when another Hampden derby came around.

Reedijk’s players could do nothing about the defeats which had gone before, but they could make sure this one ended differently. By doing so, they gave their manager a first victory which meant far more than simply booking their place in the final.

Beating Hearts will always matter to Hibs supporters. Doing it at a ground where this particular fixture had previously brought nothing but disappointment made it all the sweeter, and Reedijk will have been encouraged by the way his players dealt with the game as well as the result itself.

This Hibs team went into the semi-final with that Hampden record following them around, even though many of those involved had played no part in creating it. That is how derbies tend to work. Previous results are brought up time and again before being passed on to the next group of players, who are then expected to provide the answers.

The only way to stop the discussion was to win, and that is what Hibs did. Instead of being asked about another Hampden defeat to Hearts, these players now have a victory of their own and the satisfaction of ending a run which the support had long since grown tired of hearing about.

Some will benefit personally as well, because Hibs fans remember the players who deliver against Hearts, especially those who do it at Hampden. A good performance in an ordinary league match can be forgotten by the following weekend, but derby contributions tend to stick around for considerably longer, particularly when they put an unwanted record to bed.

That does not mean everything at Hibs is suddenly rosy, and Reedijk will know he cannot dine out on this victory indefinitely, regardless of how enjoyable it was or the rewards which came with it. One afternoon cannot answer every question about his team, and it will not spare him criticism if the results which follow are poor.

There will be bad performances, difficult runs and decisions which leave supporters wondering what the manager has seen. Reedijk is still finding his way around the club, learning about his players and trying to build a team capable of producing results every week rather than only when the occasion is as big as this one.

When those difficult moments arrive, though, he will have the Hampden result to fall back on. His players delivered on an afternoon which mattered enormously to the support, giving fans a proper reason to believe in what he is doing rather than asking them to take his plans for Hibs on trust.

The relationship between a new manager and the support normally takes time to develop, but beating Hearts at Hampden is a fairly effective way of speeding things up. Reedijk has now seen that his team can cope with everything surrounding a derby at the national stadium and still find a way to win.

It is far too early to know whether the victory will be the start of something more. Hibs supporters have lived through enough false dawns to know better than to draw too many conclusions from one result, even one as satisfying as this.

That should not take anything away from the afternoon. Hibs came through the spells when Hearts threatened, responded to the different turns the game took and got the job done when another defeat would have been sorely felt.

There is value in the players having experienced that together. The next time Hibs go into a game with so much noise around it, they can remember what happened at Hampden rather than being weighed down by somebody else’s disappointment.

The result may also help Reedijk as he continues trying to get his ideas across. Players are always more likely to buy into a manager’s methods when they can see them producing results, and there are few better ways to make the point than winning a semi-final against Hearts.

What happens next will determine whether the afternoon becomes part of something bigger, but it has given Reedijk a bit of breathing space and plenty of goodwill. Both can disappear quickly in football, but they are useful things for a new manager to have.

The reaction of the support matters here, because the relationship between a manager and the people in the stands is usually shaped during the ordinary weeks of a season. Team selections are debated, substitutions are picked apart and the mood changes with every result, sometimes several times over the course of the same afternoon.

A Hampden victory over Hearts can move things along a little faster.

Reedijk has earned the goodwill which comes with winning a derby, reaching a final and ending a miserable run in this fixture at the national stadium. It will not protect him if results take a turn for the worse, nor should it, but he has already given Hibs supporters something they had been waiting a long time to enjoy.

The hope now will be that this becomes the first of several memorable afternoons under Reedijk rather than the result everyone keeps going back to when discussing his time at the club. Whether that happens will be decided by what he and his players produce from here, but nobody needs to exaggerate the importance of what happened at Hampden.

Reedijk travelled west still waiting for his first victory as Hibs manager and returned to Edinburgh having ended an unwanted derby record, improved his standing with the support and given thousands of fans an afternoon they will remember for years.

He could hardly have found a better way to get started.