Marvin Bartley recalls 'special' Hibs dressing room and its reaction to Jason Cummings' infamous penalty miss

Marvin Bartley has revealed there is no dressing room in his career quite as special as the one he experienced during his time at Easter Road.

Jason Cummings chipping his penalty over the bar in the 2016 Scottish Cup semi-final. Picture: SNS

The Hibs favourite spoke glowingly about his former colleagues while remembering his days in Leith during a wide-ranging interview for Open Goal.

At 34 years old and now captain of Livingston, the ex-Bournemouth and Burnley midfielder has seen his share of dressing-room dynamics, but not the closeness he found during his four years in the capital.

He said: “Normally you go into changing rooms and there’s cliques and you can’t really speak to everyone. But at Hibs, and I genuinely mean this, you could go in and speak to everyone. It didn’t matter who was in there, you never felt uneasy.

“Everyone got on and we still keep in touch. Every single one of those boys I would’ve been in contact with other the last month.

“Not everyone was the same and I think that’s how it worked. Some of the guys were a bit more serious and you’d get those you had to rein in at times. But the dynamics of the dressing room just worked.”

One such player that needed reined in from time to time was Jason Cummings. The larger-than-life forward was noted for his off-field antics – and some which took place on the park as well.

A famous example came during the 2016 Scottish Cup semi-final against Dundee United. Facing a first-half penalty, Cummings decided to try and audacious Panenka-style chip which floated over the crossbar and kept the game at 0-0.

At half-time his furious team-mates weren’t afraid to let their feelings known regarding the stunt.

Bartley recalled: “It was disbelief. Although, I had a feeling when he was running up to it that he was going to do something stupid. But as I saw it rising I was just like, ‘what’s he done there?!’

“The boys went through him at half-time. Liam Fontaine, David Gray, even Lewis Stevenson was p****d off with him. A lot of the boys were raging.

“He didn’t care as well. He didn’t care. He just said, ‘well, none of you boys had the b***s to take the penalty’.”

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