IVAN SPROULE will stand on the turf at Wembley on Saturday drinking in the scenes as Bristol City prepare to face Hull City in "football's richest game" – the match which will decide who plays in the English Premier League next season.
But as he does so, the Northern Ireland star's mind will drift back to a totally different scenario, the day he pulled on a Hibs strip for the first time in the less salubrious surroundings of Ochilview.
Sproule's debut against Motherwell reserves
was overshadowed somewhat by the hat-trick scored by Mali striker Amadou Konte that day but it is the former Institute winger who has gone on to stardom.
Even so, the road has been somewhat rocky for 27-year-old Sproule who, homesick and unsettled, almost turned his back on Easter Road to return to a life of pulling on a boiler suit by day and his football boots at weekends.
Today, however, Sproule is an entirely different character to the one who sat in the dug-out during an early morning heart-to-heart with boss Tony Mowbray, forlorn and longing for his home in Castlederg.
A £10,000 fee – double that paid by Hibs only a few months earlier – had been agreed by Linfield but, as Sproule admitted, that chat with Mowbray changed his life forever.
For only 48 hours later he became the first Hibs player to score a hat-trick at Ibrox in more than a century, ensuring his place in Easter Road folklore.
Sproule said: "I've taken a few knocks along the way. I really hadn't settled, it was getting a bit hard for me and I was homesick.
"Tony called me at 7am that Thursday morning before I was going home saying he wanted to talk to me.
"We sat in the dug-out and in 15 minutes he convinced me to stay. He told me I had something to offer, that he still hadn't seen the player he wanted to see and to give it a bit more time. It just so happened we went to Ibrox on the Saturday, it turned everything around and I haven't looked back.
"A few years ago I pulled on a boiler suit every morning and now I've played at Hampden, I've got ten international caps, I've scored for my country, I've won the CIS Insurance Cup and now I am going to play in what they say is the richest game in football.
"For all that, I'll forever be grateful to Hibs. I was very lucky in signing for a good club, working with great people, everyone at Easter Road took me in – the fans included.
"I've had Hibs supporters coming down here every week throughout the season, everywhere I've gone they've just kept coming which has been terrific.
"But I wouldn't have got anywhere without working hard. I realised quite quickly that nothing was going to be handed to me on a plate.
"I've been blessed with one thing, pace, but the coaching staff and the fans gave be belief and once I got that I started to believe anything was possible."
Having turned down the chance to join Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk following Hibs' UEFA Cup clashes with the Ukrainian side, Sproule made the £500,000 move to the West Country last summer for what he describes as "a new chapter" in his career.
He said: "I was never going to just leave Hibs. Moving on was a massive, massive decision in my life. I knew it had to be the right kind of club for me, the right kind of people and (City manager] Gary Johnson convinced me of that.
"I've played more football than ever before and it's been a great season for us. It's been such a tough league with the sides at the bottom capable of beating those at the top.
"Clubs get something like £30 million in parachute payments just for being relegated so there's massive money and clubs like Southampton, Crystal Palace and Leicester City with big grounds.
"We finished fourth and now we are one game away from the Premier League. It's a thrilling thought to think we could be playing at places like Old Trafford, Anfield and White Hart Lane next season."
The fact Bristol City have beaten Hull and drawn with them during the regular season has, according to Sproule, given the Ashton Gate outfit a quiet confidence that they'll be enjoying an open-top bus tour of the West Country town, a scenario he has, of course, already enjoyed in Edinburgh following Hibs' CIS Cup win over Kilmarnock last March.
He said: "It's going to be a magical day. My family are all coming over again although since we are heading for London today I probably won't see them until after the match.
"People don't realise how big a club this is. We sold 36,000 tickets in the space of a few hours and the club is planning to build a new ground.
"It would be fantastic to repeat the scenes after that day at Hampden. I could take you through every minute of that day even now – well, perhaps not the final wee while.
"It was just so memorable, walking home through the streets of Leith, seeing so many people so happy and knowing you had played a part in putting those smiles on their faces.
"I still have that daft Irish hat I was wearing that night in my garage – I'll have to remember to get it out and dust it down ready for use again."
The full article contains 936 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
