Jason Cummings spared Hibernian's blushes with an injury-time winner as a day of celebration turned into one of relief.
Hibs' marked club legend Pat Stanton's 70th birthday by giving away 7,000 tickets.
But for spells in-between, most of the 11,021 crowd endured another frustrating performance as the Blue Brazil came from behind to lead in the second half. But substitute Cummings applied the icing on the cake as Alan Stubbs' side ended a run of three-straight Championship losses with a much-needed win over the part-time basement outfit.
The feelgood factor was evident when the hosts went ahead through Jordon Forster in the 26th minute. Scott Allan's free kick found Matthew Kennedy on the right and the winger's cross was headed in at the back post by the centre-half.
No-one, though, could have anticipated the whirlwind start to the second half as the visitors stunned Hibs. Sean Higgins notched Cowdenbeath's equaliser after 50th minutes when he met John Armstrong's low delivery into the box to slide a low shot past Mark Oxley.
The visitors then carved Hibs open for the second. Higgins' reverse pass set Callum Gallagher free in the box and the on-loan Rangers striker chipped a cross to the far post. Paul Hanlon made a mess of his clearance and Jon Robertson nipped in to direct a shot past Oxley. "At 2-1 I was thinking I must have run over a black cat or something," said Stubbs. "But the lads showed spirit to keep going."
The arrival of new striker Dominique Malonga helped spark a revival, the former Cesena player thundering home a penalty in the 78th minute after Forster was felled by Armstrong.
The winner arrived in the fourth minute of injury-time. Kennedy's cross into the area fell to Cummings and the marksman cooly slotted a right-foot shot into the net from close range.
Cowdenbeath manager Jimmy Nicholl said: "We've scored two goals away from home and we end up conceding another three, I'm at my absolute wits' end about what to do."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article