YOU would have required a heart of stone, or perhaps a Hearts season ticket, to remain unmoved by the sound of the Proclaimers booming over the public address system at an utterly euphoric Easter Road on Tuesday night. Twenty months ago, though, when it came to the subject of their favourite football club, these die-hard Hibee twins were making rather less harmonious noises.

Charlie Reid had made common cause with fellow malcontents such as former Hibs player Paul Kane as anger swelled against chairman Rod Petrie in the wake of the club's last gasp relegation via the play-offs against Hamilton Accies. There were car park demonstrations against manager Terry Butcher, and genuine talk of withholding season-ticket money, of forcing regime change and starting again.

Yet here we are now. Whatever happens in the remainder of this season, Tuesday night was one of those moments where you just had to stand back and recognise that something remarkable is happening.

In fact, this season has seen a glut of such occasions. Think Leicester City beating Manchester City a fortnight ago to open up a five-point gap at the top of the Barclays Premier League. Or Tottenham beating Manchester City at the same venue one week later, breathing life into their hopes of a first English top flight title for half a century. The Scottish equivalent arrived in the wake of Jason Cummings' third minute goal which knocked Hearts out of the William Hill Scottish Cup.

With a League Cup final appearance in the bag, and a fighting chance of Ladbrokes Championship victory, the impossible dream continues. But whatever transpires from here on in, Hibs are already winners when it comes to the complete reconnection of a community with a football club.

"We talk about fans’ numbers dwindling and it’s not easy right now with the way things are," said manager Alan Stubbs, fresh from taking a post-match bow which met with a huge roar of approval. "But we’ve got a full house of nearly 20,000 which is a sign of how much the fans are appreciating the team right now. That's the biggest compliment that they can be given."

Stubbs is rightly lauded for his part in it all. It was he who first articulated these ambitions, even if he seemed a bit unsure how to verbalise them. Presaging his answer with 'I don't want to read headlines about how we we can do the treble', he then went on to say that indeed his Hibs team did plan to be competitive in all three competitions this season. If anyone was scoffing then, they certainly aren't now.

This new sense of hope around this club even has a resilient quality. The positivity around Easter Road has endured occasions such as last season's play-off reverse to Rangers, or say the 4-2 defeat at Ibrox over the festive period or last Saturday's goalless draw at Livingston. The championship race may yet prove too much for them - with fixtures mounting up, the potentially pivotal meeting with the Ibrox side will not now take place till mid-April - but on this form there is little to suggest Hibs' title hopes won't still be alive by then.

While Stubbs is carving out a name in management, chief executive Leeann Dempster has performed the kind of quiet miracles which belied suggestions that working with Petrie would quickly become a poisoned chalice. Even the Liverpudlian seemed genuinely amazed this January by the quality of their recruitment. If the assets which Anthony Stokes possesses is clear enough, the worth of midfield re-inforcements Marvin Bartley and Kevin Thomson was also clear for all to see on Tuesday night. With Fraser Fyvie and Dylan McGeouch injured, they hardly skipped a beat. Even when bravery and brawn became the order of the day, rather than passing and movement, they still measured up to the task.

"We are the only team still in three competitions," said Darren McGregor, a long-suffering, dyed-in-the-wool Hibee, who was another shrewd signing back in the summer. "We have Alloa next on Sunday but this is a result to be celebrated. We were hanging on and they were putting pressure on us but to see it out and hear the stadium singing Sunshine on Leith was one the best memories I’ve had in football."

You can reel off 18 first-team players without any discernible drop-off in quality but the star turn right now has to be John McGinn, the midfielder who somehow avoided the interest of any bigger clubs in the food chain when he departed St Mirren last summer. This is a player who turned Gordon Strachan's eye and earned the commendation of Scott Brown when locking horns with him in the colours of the Paisley side, a player who will surely be upgraded to the Scotland full squad in time to feature in the World Cup campaign.

"I definitely feel as if I have taken it to another level," said McGinn. "But it is something I want to keep doing, keep improving again, keep learning from good pros. I was made aware at the time [of the League Cup win with St Mirren] that they don't come around too often but that made me hungry for more.

"We have got some exciting games to look forward to and I am just glad to be part of it," he added. "We are the only club still in three major competitions. We are not going to give up, we just want to tick the games off."

Who knows, it may all just be an improbable dream. Hibs could wake up at any moment. Ross County, in the League Cup final, just deservedly disposed of Celtic, while Inverness, in the Scottish Cup, are fresh from making mincemeat of Aberdeen. Rangers are in the box seat when it comes to the league. Leicester and Spurs may fall by the wayside too. But there is a momentum growing at Hibs which is taking on a life of its own.

They still play the Hibs way, but no longer is there an acceptance that it is also in the club's DNA to be romantically fated as the perennial nearly men of Scottish football. Aberdeen, Dundee United, St Johnstone and Hearts will attest to that. Hibs are on a journey. Only their final destination remains unclear.