Thornton maintained their 100% League record with an eventually comfortable victory over Arbroath Vics.
 
Hibs’ manager Craig Gilbert made just the one change from the team that won well at Dundee North End last week; Max Coleman coming in for the unavailable Shaun Keatings.
 
Hibs opened the scoring in the 8th minute with a well-worked goal. Nick McGowan found space on the left and fired in a long diagonal ball that was headed down by Chris Ireland to the inrushing Garry Thomson who coolly knocked the ball beyond Josh Allardyce. Arbroath almost immediately got back on level terms, but Dean Gear superbly tipped Charlie Wilson’s effort over the bar. Vics’ Kellon Lyons then found space at a corner to beat Gear, but Stuart Drummond was on hand to clear the ball off the line.
 
Thornton doubled their advantage on 26 minutes with a collector’s item – a Jimmy Shields goal! Shields charged up the wing and played a neat one-two with Chris Ireland before lashing the ball low beyond Allardyce. Garry Thomson could then have made it three a couple of minutes later, but he fired over from a good position.
 
Arbroath got themselves back into the game in the 34th minutes when a free-kick from the half-way line by Ross Paterson was headed in rather fortuitously by Lyons after Ian Shanks had just failed to get enough on his header. It was almost all-square within sixty seconds, but Gear made another great save; this time from Rikki Gillespie. Hibs then had to shuffle the pack when Shanks was forced to leave the field when he could not recover from a late challenge from Marc Walker. Vics had a spell of domination before the break as their long-ball tactics troubled the Hibs’ defence on a couple of occasions.
 
It was Hibs’ turn to dominate proceedings in the early stages of the second half and Allardyce kept his team in the game on 56 minutes when he tipped over Thomson’s close-range header. Matthew Robertson was next to try his luck from distance, but his rising shot did not trouble Allardyce.
 
The game changer was manager Gilbert’s third substitution – Coco Mullen - as he set up one and scored two in his twenty minutes on the pitch. On 73 minutes, Mullen held up the ball under pressure before deftly setting up Chris Ireland to run onto goal and around Allardyce before rolling the ball into the empty net. Ten minutes later Mullen was on hand to fire Thomson’s corner beyond Allardyce from close range for his first. His second and Thornton’s fifth goal arrived in stoppage time and Hibs have Stuart Drummond to thank for “setting it up”. He got his body in the way of an absolute piledriver from Walker, and when Chris Ireland got on the end of the eventual clearance, he raced upfield before dinking the ball on to the head of Mullen at the back post to complete the scoring.
 
Hibs' Man of the Match - Garry Thomson
 
Thornton Hibs: Gear, D.Robertson, Shields, Drummond, Shanks, McGowan, Crichton, Hepburn, Ireland, Coleman, Thomson. Subs: Henderson, M.Robertson, Mullen, Strachan, Clark.
 
Arbroath Victoria: Allardyce, Bastow, Paterson, Durno, Florence, Gray, Gillespie, Lyons, Walker, Wilson, Donald. Subs: Warren, Clark, McCulloch, Lewis.
 
Referee: Mr G. MacDonald
 
Match statistics:
Attempts at goal - TH 16 AV 5
Attempts on target - TH 10 AV 3
Corners - TH 7 AV 4
Offside - TH 3 AV 0
Fouls committed - TH 8 AV 12
Yellow Cards - TH 1 AV 1
Red Cards - TH 0 AV 0