SCOTTISH CUP BUILD-UP: How Caley Thistle captain Sean Welsh overcame adversity to fulfil his ambition of playing in the Scottish Cup final at Hampden Park.
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As Sean Welsh grew up in native Edinburgh, there were dreams of helping beloved Hibernian end their great Hampden hoodoo – only to see them crushed by injuries.
A cruel spate of mishaps and career setbacks saw the now-Caley Thistle captain leave Easter Road in 2012, three years before the club’s national stadium jinx finally ended.
Through repeated adversity and twists of fate, the long road to Hampden Park has veered in directions Welsh never could have anticipated as a talented kid cutting his teeth with the Hibees.
Those green-tinged boyhood ambitions may have faded, but through sheer willpower and stubborn determination in the face of a catalogue of injuries, Welsh will finally set foot on the hallowed turf on Saturday, leading out his adopted Highland club.
At Easter Road, the youthful Welsh endured a double leg break that shattered hopes of a first team breakthrough.
Then in 2011, a punch thrown by team-mate Martin Scott, the former Ross County midfielder, during a training session left him needing four operations to repair a fractured cheekbone.
An infection picked up during one of them might have proven life-changing with a threat to his eyesight.
After release by Hibs, success followed at Partick with a First Division title, promotion to the Premier League and four top-flight seasons.
But even then, the classy playmaker’s momentum was all too frequently broken by spells on the treatment table, including serious knee issues.
Through eight months without a club, appearing at the national stadium was farthest from his thoughts before Caley Thistle came calling in 2018 after a brief spell at Falkirk.
Welsh has since admitted he initially saw Inverness as a stop-gap before a return to the central belt, but since then the club and city has got under his skin.
Settled there now with his family, there is still a sense of pinching himself at the prospect of a Scottish Cup final at the age of 33.
“It ranks at the very top for me, career-wise,” Welsh admitted.
“It’s not very often you get to play on an occasion like this, especially at my age, getting to the latter stages of my career.
“I am thoroughly looking forward to it.
“We’ve got to believe, I’ve said that to the lads all week. We’ve got to believe we can pull off a miracle.
“We don’t just want to go there for a day out and get caught up in the occasion.
Written off
“We’ve got to use that as motivation, a lot of people have written us off already.
“Rightly or wrongly that’s their opinion, but we’re still a professional team and we’ve still got respect for the group we have.
“No one thinks it will be easy, but we will go there believing we can do it.
“We will try and cause a massive upset.
“I’ve climbed bigger mountains because I have fought against injury all my career.
“There were times when I thought I wasn’t going to come back from certain injuries.
“I’ve had to be mentally tough and this is a reward for all the struggles I have been through.
“I probably never thought when I came to this club that I would be playing in the Scottish Cup final, but the club has a history with this competition.
“They’ve won it before and hopefully we can do it again.
“This is a reward for the resilience I’ve shown and I’m glad I stuck it out and fought so hard.
“But as a football player you don’t really enjoy it unless you are winning so that’s what I am going there to try and do.”
“We know it’s a massive challenge in front of us, but we’ve got to have belief in ourselves.”
Beating a Celtic side with designs on another treble would amount to one of, if not the, greatest shocks in Scottish football history.
There is every awareness in the Highland camp of just how difficult a task that will be, but no shortage of quiet confidence and resolve.
“We know we have a good group and we know we are going to be up against it during times in the game, but we’ve got to stick together and have that belief throughout,” Welsh stressed.
“Having to wait four weeks has been difficult, not ideal, but after the last game of the season a few of the boys got away, recharged the batteries a bit.
“I managed to get away for a week to Cyprus with my wife, to relax a bit. There was a gym in the hotel so I was making sure I was ticking over each day.
“You can’t allow yourself to take your foot off the gas.
“It refreshed me mentally, but it was a weird one too because at the back of your mind is the game.
“Normally on holiday you completely switch off and enjoy your downtime. You couldn’t really do that this time, you couldn’t really have a glass of wine.
“Even coming back in the first few days was weird because it didn’t really feel as though you’d had a break.
“But we’re in a good place now - and ready for it.”
Another benefit of the break has been processing the acute disappointment of narrowly missing out on another tilt at the Premiership play-offs.
Having come within 45 minutes of gaining promotion before a fatigued second half collapse in Perth, this season’s momentum was hit hard by a huge number of injuries.
Welsh, of course, was one of those forced to sit it out, only kick-starting his campaign in mid-October.
“We had disappointment at the end of the season in missing out on the play-offs but we’ve come back in and really enjoyed the training,” he said.
“We’ve worked hard on how we’re going to play against Celtic because we know the size of the challenge facing us.
“In hindsight, it has been good to get some time to get over what happened in that last game of the season.
“We were all disappointed to miss out on the play-offs so that has been one benefit in terms of clearing our minds.
“We didn’t want that lingering going into what’s a massive game for us. We’re refreshed and excited.”
Welsh gives a wry smile at mention of Celtic dropping off in form and momentum before an end of season thumping of Aberdeen.
Sloppy performances prior to the Hoops’ trophy day don’t enter the captain’s thinking.
“I don’t think you can look too much into that,” he said.
“They wrapped up the title early doors and then had a few results they probably weren’t happy with but you saw at the weekend they can turn it on when they need to.
“It’s not going to make much difference to us, we know how hard it is going to be.
“There’s nothing really I can look at because I’ve never experienced an occasion like this.
“We’ve proven this year when we’ve been underdogs twice against Premiership opposition, beating Kilmarnock and Livingston, that we can do it.
“We were big underdogs going to Livingston the way their season was going and the way our season was going too.
“We proved a point that day we can mix it with the best, but obviously Celtic are a different kettle of fish.
“We know how difficult it’s going to be but we actually relish being the underdogs, and I think we play better when we’re the underdogs.
“Hopefully it stands us in good stead.
“We’ve had a miracle already in the Scottish Cup, getting that reprieve when Queen’s Park made that error.
“We hope that’s a sign.
“Our striker Billy McKay made that point when we got back in that we’ll be one of those quiz questions - who got put out but then went on to win the cup?
“We’re hoping that’s going to be the case.
“But at the end of the day Celtic are going for the treble and we know how much that means to them.
“We hope it’s fate on our side, but it’s up to us to make sure it’s fate.”
