'Fly fishing in a sink' - the remarkable untold Hibs story behind 2016 Scottish Cup glory

Mathie, now managing director at Championship leaders Ayr United, is preparing to welcome his former club to Somerset Park for Friday night’s televised fifth round tie. He was an integral part of the backroom team when Hibs won the cup to break a 114-year hoodoo with a 3-2 win over Rangers.

Logan was parachuted in for the semi-final against Dundee United to replace the suspended Mark Oxley, saving two penalties in the shootout win. It was his first senior game in 16 months and the physical shape he was in reflected that. The then 29-year-old had made the No.1 spot his own by the time of the final and made eight appearances in total.

Mathie recalled sitting on the team bus following the 2-1 quarter-final replay win at Inverness Caledonian Thistle, during which Oxley had lost a contact lens and been booked for time wasting. It was the goalkeeeper’s second booking in the competition and meant he was suspended for the last four clash at Hampden. Mathie received a call from George Craig, the Hibs head of football operations.

“He said, ‘We need you to sign another goalkeeper! I’ve just spoken to the manager (Alan Stubbs), we have the young Finnish boy, Otso Virtanen, but he is not sure if he wants to play him or not. Can you find us a goalie that might be able to play in the Scottish Cup semi-final?’

“My quote was, ‘George, you are asking me to go fly fishing in a sink here!’ How do we find an out-of-contract goalie who is capable enough of playing in a Scottish Cup semi and hopefully getting us into a final?”

Handily, Mathie recalled a trip south he’d made with scout Kevin Harper, the former Hibs striker. “I drove that day to watch Bury and he (Harper) went to watch Rochdale, where Conrad was on loan at the time. I dropped him off at one game and I went to watch the other. That was probably the last report we had on him because he was injured not long afterwards. That’s where his name came from.”

Logan reported for duty at Hibs looking somewhat short of fighting fit. “The story I can tell now is that his agent told me he had been training for 5-6 weeks with Leicester, who he had left in the summer,” says Mathie. “He told me that had helped him and he was fit and then he walked in in the shape he was!

“The medical department said he was medically sound, just not obviously in condition. The advice was to try and condition him otherwise he could break down. But he should be able to get through the games.

“It was only after we had won the cup that I realised he had only trained for about two days when he was out for 18 months, so the agent was maybe over-egging how fit he was and how much training he had done.

"He had the game of his life in the semi. If we had lost that, I’ve no doubt, with the run we were on of losing the League Cup semi-final and losing the play-off final in the last minute, the whole period might be remembered very differently.”