Full Circle - Another Semi Final at Hampden.

For anyone who has been unfortunate enough to listen to me on GIGPOD , you'll know I don't go completely overboard with showering this current side with the limitless praise like many others do and have been vocal for a return of the good old days to come back to Scottish Fitba.

It'll come as quite a surprise to you but amazingly I wasn't always this way.

Aye, the Tories getting into power in 2010 didn't help, coinciding with a disastrously bad holiday in Athens in the midst of their national recession, but fitba was a welcome distraction and after the malaise of 09/10, the siege mentality brought back to the club by Neil Lennon the following season was greatly appreciated and despite losing out on the league that season, we were back, and everyone was re-energised from the Hampden nightmare the previous year.

To put it bluntly , I was back in bampot mode, getting worked into a shoot over the slightest bad tackle on our players and screaming abuse at refs. What a time to be me.

We'd blew the chance to win a league title at Ibrox, but won it a fortnight later at Rugby Park in some style, so I was in a buoyant mood ahead of the Scottish Cup semi final at Hampden in 2012, to play Paulo Sergio's Hearts, who we'd gubbed at Tynecastle a couple of months beforehand.

Something was immediately off before the kick off. Our fans were eerily quiet considering we were going for a double. Was it the league cup final against Kilmarnock that we lost a month earlier still in the back of our minds at this very venue that caused this ? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Something wasn't right though, as our fans just weren't up for it, which was some contrast to the Hearts fans that day, who turned up in their droves and made some noise pre match, to go along with their tinfoil display that they had assembled.

We know what happened. I don't need to do a match report. Somehow, despite having so many clear cut chances, we conspired to lose the game 2-1 , and we would end up with just the league title that season.

We know now it was a handball, and we weren't the victims of some SFA conspiracy, or the fall guys in a masterplan concocted by a new world order, but shot ourselves in the foot despite being overwhelming favourites to progress to the final.

At the time though, I was very much of the opinion we had been cheated, stopped by the masonic hand of the Hampden beaks and all the other excuses that fit the victim narrative.

I ran down to the front of the stand to scream the type of abuse at Euan Norris that wouldn't make a D-12 Skit. On the way home to my flat I was on the phone texting every one of my pals to work together and draft up a complaint letter to the SFA. I wish I was joking here, but this is unfortunately a shoot. That game broke me in many ways which is strange as I can name at least ten worse results in our history that I've been to, off the top of my head, including the Coca Cola cup final defeat to Raith Rovers and the 4-0 doing at Ibrox in 2000.

It was likely due to not imagining us blowing such a tap in, and we did. We did it against Kilmarnock a month previously at Hampden, and that was a one off, or so I thought. For it to happen twice in succession just deflated me, and it's a reason that I can't listen to that KC & The Sunshine Band song that they played then they scored in that game, as that song coinciding with Craig Beattie doing that lap around the goal after his penalty is my own personal 'Nam. I was there, man.

Five years on, in similar circumstances, we have the chance to make it to the final again. We're heavily fancied, no one really believes Rangers will be able to stop us, yet there's that 1% chance that they can. That's what Hearts had, and it still worries me going into this match, slightly.

The difference between Lennon's 11/12 team and this team under Rodgers are massive though, but most importantly, we've already won a cup this season at Hampden whereas that League Cup final loss in 2012 will have played on Lennon and his team's mind going into the Hearts match back then.

I've already predicted us to win 3-1 and we should progress, but a win here would fully blow away the demons of that terrible day on 15th April 2012.

With all that said, as bad as that game was, it did give us this.

The dream : to play Hibs in the final and win 1-0 thanks to a dodgy penalty for a sequel to that tweet.