GOOD things come to those who wait.

That tired old slogan from brewers Guinness might as well have been designed for Hibs and their protracted pursuit of the Scottish Cup yesterday. While Hibs have been waiting 110 years for glory in this competition, Pat Fenlon himself has only suffered for five months of it, but it was still somehow appropriate that he will be savouring a few pressure-free pints of the black stuff in his native Dublin this afternoon as he watches Hearts and Celtic fight it out for the right to meet his side in the final at Hampden on May 19.

Hibs' 1902 victory in this competition was back in the days when they drew mainly from the Irish immigrant community in Edinburgh and were managed by an Irishman, Dan McMichael, and Fenlon – five times a cup winner in Ireland as both player and manager – said last night that he would do everything in his power to follow in his countryman's footsteps and reward the club's long-suffering supporters with the trophy.

It took a late goal from Leigh Griffiths, a man with whom Fenlon has had his moments, to book the club's first Scottish Cup final appearance since 2001, and first in any competition since winning the 2007 League Cup final.

Fenlon had known after "about three seconds" in the job just how important the club's cup hoodoo was to the club's psyche. "It is probably not something that weighs on my mind to be fair, which is good, because it is ingrained in people who have been at the club for a long time," he said. "From my point of view, it is five months. We have given ourselves a chance to break it, but we will need to play a lot better than we did today. But as a first attempt, it is not bad.

"I don't care who we play in the final," he added. "We are there now and that is the main thing. But we have had a little bit of luck in the cups this year so it might be our year. I will have a few pints of Guinness and I will enjoy it on the telly."

If this match was enjoyable for the Easter Road side, it became an absolute ordeal for Aberdeen. For them, the wait in the cup competitions goes on. Fans from the northeast unfurled a pre-match banner to remind anyone who saw it that the club were founded exactly 109 years ago, a time when the Easter Road club were Scottish Cup champions. While Fenlon led a team out at Hampden for the first time, Craig Brown was back to his old stomping ground for a third cup semi-final as Aberdeen boss – all of them unsuccessful, as it was to turn out. He made two changes to his starting line-up – bringing in Kari Arnason for the cup-tied Gavin Rae, and Rory Fallon for Mackie – while the benched Russell Anderson was the only survivor of the team which last reached the final in 2000.

The self-styled Red Army must have set their alarms for 6am in order to get down to Glasgow for the noon kick-off, but within two minutes their day had taken a turn for the worse. The casual defending which allowed Garry O'Connor to feed one ball across goal was bad enough, but permitting Pa Kujabi to lever it back in and forgetting all about the Scotland striker as he retreated from an offside position was criminal. O'Connor cushioned in a neat side-foot volley which caught Jason Brown out at his near post.

The onus was on Aberdeen now, but whether it was big-match nerves, or lack of confidence, they singularly failed to go through the gears in the first 45 minutes. Too often they were too leaden-footed and predictable, and the greater threat came at the other end, where Griffiths fizzed a couple of left-footed efforts wide.

It took the half-time introduction of Fraser Fyvie for the luckless Ryan Jack – he suffered a clash of heads with Jorge Claros – to spark signs of life. First, Andy Considine headed too close to Graham Stack, then Fyvie knocked a first time volley over the bar.

The goal was coming, but few expected it to arrive in the manner it did. Matt Doherty was unconvincing in dealing with a Mark Reynolds pass, and there was Fallon, scorer of an expert volley against Motherwell in the quarter-finals, leaping high, killing the ball on his chest and firing in a searing left-foot volley which dipped under the crossbar. Peter Crouch could hardly have done it any better.

"We defended the two goals very poorly," said Brown afterwards. "To lose one in the second minute upset the lads. When we got to 1-1 we had an opportunity, we'll never have a better opportunity, to get to a cup final, and we failed to take it."

Stack limped off injured, Aberdeen veteran Darren Mackie came on for Chris Clark and David Wotherspoon made a difference for Hibs when he replaced Claros, but from the Grampian side's point of view, they fatally withdrew into themselves again.

Griffiths had already struck the foot of the post by the time a typically strong James McPake was expertly steered into his path by O'Connor to roll in a tidy right-foot finish.

The post-match rendition of the Proclaimers anthem 'Sunshine on Leith' had rarely seemed more passionate.