Peter Houston yesterday aimed a crafty dig at his team’s only remaining rivals for the runners-up spot in the Championship on being asked whether he felt his Falkirk side has the resolve to claim the win they need over Morton on Sunday.
"Do you think Falkirk will ‘Hibs it’?” he asked rhetorically, eyes twinkling mischievously as he deployed a phrase that has, in some quarters, come to be cruelly synonymous with losing your nerve.
He claims to have been unaffected by the mind games Alan Stubbs, his Hibs counterpart, is widely regarded as having engaged in and while, in black and white, Houston’s comments could be interpreted as betraying irritation, his demeanour was good-humoured and relaxed as he looked ahead to a day on which, if Falkirk win, Hibs will have to do so by three more goals against Queen of the South to pip them.
“I genuinely don’t listen to all that crap, but I think a lot of people throughout the season have been waiting on us to crumble,” he said.
“They’ve said it’s been a great season so far, but come the end it’ll be Rangers and Hibs. Well, no it isn’t. That’s not the way it has happened.
“I credit our players and the group we have got for our consistency. We don’t always play well but we have this knack of being able to grind out results. That’s all down to character and desire, so if we crumble on the last day it will be the first time we have crumbled all season.”
Houston reckons the challenge of facing Hibs and Rangers over the past two years as well as Hearts last season has whetted his players’ appetites for a step up to the Premiership and believes their ambition has kept him in a job.
“I said last summer I was looking for us to be more consistent and to try our best. We didn’t fear Hibs or Rangers and we would try our best to be better than we were last season,” he said.
“We had to get to the play-offs. If we hadn’t I wouldn’t have been here, fact. So we have achieved a lot of the stuff I spoke about last summer and more.”
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