Hibs double award winner Obita has words of wisdom for new boys
A year into his own journey of discovery in Scottish football, Jordan Obita does his best to provide new arrivals with some pointers on what to expect. But admits that, in the long run, the reaction to a shock cup loss to lower league opposition might be worth more than any golden nuggets of wisdom he passes on.
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Hide AdThe former Reading, Oxford United and Wycombe left back said the response to a 1-0 defeat away to Kelty Hearts had underlined the importance of Hibs in the wider context of the Scottish game, the Englishman saying: “Yeah, it's a massive club. Even for me last year I didn't know exactly how big, but when you start playing and getting used to everything around here, you start realising it's a massive club.
“It’s a big city, a big, massive rivalry in the city as well. Once you maybe lose a couple of games, you start realising, okay, you've stopped performing to the standard that we were expecting to be at.”
Explaining how he’d helped new arrivals Warren O’Hora, Marvin Ekpiteta, Josef Bursik and Jordan Smith – all with plenty of experience at a variety of levels down south – brace themselves for their looming collision with the Scottish Premiership, Obita described the country’s elite league in terms of contrasts. With standards varying from Champions League to the second tier of the EFL.
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Hide Ad“The first thing I said is that it's different to English football,” said Obita. “Different games, different styles.
“When you play against Rangers, you're not going to have the ball, so you have to be very organised - and you have to defend for your lives. When you're playing other teams, you probably have more ball than not, but you just need to make the most of it when you do play.
“It's like playing against a Premier League team and then playing against a team from the Championship or League One. In England, you're obviously in that division, so you're always playing against the same sort of standard.
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Hide Ad“It's a good test because you want to play against the best players and the best teams that you can play against. Whether I'm playing Celtic or I'm playing teams down near the bottom, I want to try and be better than them. That's my ultimate target.”
Obita won the Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year awards at the end of last season, an unexpected honour for the 30-year-old, who admitted: “To be fair, even last year it was never in my mind. I've always wanted to try and dominate on the pitch, dominate my opponent, who I'm playing against individually and also as a team to win. So that's always my target.
“To win the players' award is really nice because I'm with them every single day. They're part of my basically family and it's nice that they thought well of me.
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Hide Ad“When you get an award like that, you want to carry it into the next season, you feel extra responsibility on yourself to set standards. Yeah, it gives me a massive confidence boost. I always want to be one of the best. Hopefully again this year I can prove that again.”
Obita will start against Peterhead this afternoon, as Hibs look to bounce back from the Kelty loss. A win would put them top of Group C and into he last 16, with the format of the rebranded League Cup giving them a second chance after last weekend’s debacle.
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Hide Ad“The gaffer did say that, that we could have been out of the competition,” said Obita. “That's why we can’t drop our standards. We've got another chance to put it right, knock those teams out and make progress to the next round.”