Wyness Defeats Winter

I think the referee’s impartiality (or otherwise) can be best summed up by an incident in the first half, when a Hibs player fell over his own feet and put on an Oscar winning performance of Dear Hunter proportions. Hibs were bursting up the field and the referee, quite rightly, ignored him. Until, that is, Caley Thistle got possession of the ball. The ref then stopped play, the Hibs player got to his feet and ran up the park and, without so much as word to him, the ref restarted play with a drop ball but not before making it perfectly clear to Brewster, that he was to give possession to Hibs.

To be fair to Mr Winter, it did seem that a big part of Hibs game plan was to con the referee at every given opportunity.

With ten minutes on the clock Malkowski, the Hibs keeper, appeared to barge into Craig Brewster and when Brew reacted he was duly booked and just a minute later Fox set up Wyness for his first shot at goal. This was all to set the pattern of the first half: Caley Thistle had the best of the play and were creating the best chances, the ref was determined to halt our free flowing game at every given opportunity and was aided and abetted in this by Hibs players, who seemed to fall over with great regularity.

The second half was barley two minutes old when Brewster sent a ball over the top of the Hibs defence, setting up Wyness perfectly. Denzil’s low shot was parried by Malkowski but, the rapidly improving, David Proctor was on hand to bundle the ball over the line. The jags went for the jugular and minutes later Ross Tokley shot just wide.

Then Hibs made a double substitution and the game settled back into its former pattern, with the ref becoming more erratic by the minute. With the biggest fallacy of all coming just after the hour mark, Dennis Wyness pulled out of a challenge with the Hibs goalkeeper and had turned away, when Malkowski decided that having the ball was not enough for him. He fell on the ground clutching his head, determined to do everything in his power to get a fellow professional a yellow (or perhaps even red) card.

The jeers and chants of “cheat” had hardly died away when Dennis popped up again and chipped the goalie. Ironically breaking Ian Stewart’s goal record with a goal reminiscent of the great man himself.

Celebrations, however, were short lived as Brewster was given his marching orders minutes later. It was now 10 against 12 and for the rest of the game Caley desperately tried to hang on to their lead. It was a close run thing as Hibs pulled a goal back in the eighty-second minute, courtesy of a Fletcher header.

We played thirty minutes without our player/manager and did not get one decision from the ref, who also allowed the game to run almost five minutes over time in, what seemed to this reporter, an attempt to allow Hibs to gain a point but once again the Jaggies showed that team work and determination can overcome most obstacles and walked away with all three points.