Hindsight is a wonderful thing and all too prevalent in sports.

Americans love to disparage the "Monday morning quarterback" fan who picks apart the decisions taken the previous day, safe and smug in the knowledge that he'll never be the one really calling the shots. There's also the ever-present danger of reading too much into either wins or losses, when Rudyard Kipling's advice to meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same should be followed.

Saturday's game against Hibs, however, could go down as a classic of the genre. There's no way to know in advance that several players would have off days, commit basic errors or come up against an inspired David Marshall. On the other hand, I'm not sure if sticking with the same tactics and line up that steamrollered St Mirren was the correct approach to take. Hibs have a reputation this season, for all their flair and firepower up top, for being shaky at the back and occasionally struggling to cope with higher tempo matches and being matched up on the wings; by letting Hibs largely dictate possession and tempo, it made it difficult for us to play to our own strengths and to get the right men on the ball at the right time.

Saturday's game should instead go down as part of the learning curve for this side. Losing at home, particularly with an opponent down to ten men for the final half an hour, is always going to hurt, but it's still a remarkable sign of how far this team has come since being thrown together in the summer that narrowly losing to Hibs is a frustration rather than being par for the course. It very much has the same vibes as our game against St Mirren at the start of the season; a case of being able to draw valuable lessons from a defeat rather than being left wondering what's to come.

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One immediate lesson which will be acted upon almost immediately is that squad rotation, even after a thumping victory, is a necessity at this time of the year. Bizarrely, a number of our starting eleven were in business during the international break - when was the last time we could say that? - and perhaps Saturday's match was a chance to give Zach Robinson a start instead of jetsetting Amadou Bakayoko. Questions of a positive sort also have to be asked about whether we go with wingers from the off, given the impact that Tiffoney and Reilly had after being introduced. Of course, that was against ten men defending a lead, but if the options exist to switch things up and keep opponents guessing, I imagine they'll be taken.

All is not lost - far from it. We remain on the right side of the 7/5 divide in the league, and victory against Motherwell on Saturday would put even more clear blue water between us and the bottom end of the table ahead of a tough game at Ibrox. As was the case following previous defeats, getting back on the horse quickly and putting the disappointment behind us is all we can ask for.

The weekend was made all the more "ach, for crying out loud" by the cup draw. Killie away isn't the worst draw, but it wasn't far from it, with our manager's former employers boasting an enviable home record and a similarly decent start to this season's Premiership.

You don't need to own copies of ‘They Wore the Dark Blue and Up Wi The Bonnets’ to know that Dundee's record in the Scottish Cup is, let's say, not our finest trait. Allegedly cursed by the display of our 1910 trophy in an undertaker's window, we've not lifted it again since the invention of plastic, powered flight and the creation of four or five US states, and boy, do we know it. A narrow defeat to a hungover Rangers side in 2003 is as agonisingly close as we've come in my lifetime, and I retain some hope that this season's squad has a chance at a decent run.

It's dreamland stuff to imagine that we'd get a serendipitous stream of lower league sides paving the way to Hampden, of course, and at some point along the way you have to prove your worth to earn a chance at the trophy, but it would've been nice to be arrogantly dismissing a home tie against a League One/Two side in this round before moving on to the challenging fixtures. Still, could be worse - we could've been missing entirely following a penalty shootout defeat in Dumfries....