Thornton Hibs: After astonishing 7-3 win, Scotland's longest serving football manager Craig Gilbert hails 'total transformation' in his team this season

Despite conceding a goal to Shippy’s Dan Thomson straight from kick-off, Hibs led 3-1 at half-time thanks to Andy McCallion’s double and Andy Adam’s 25-yarder. James McNeish’s volley further increased the visitors' lead and although former Thornton ace Shaun Keatings pulled one back, Harris Duffy, Lee Horsburgh and Garry Thomson added further goals for Gilbert’s team, with Shippy at one stage having pulled it back to 5-3 via Kris Murphy.

"I’m not saying Saturday was expected but we believe that on our day we can beat anybody in the league,” Gilbert – Scotland’s longest-serving manager, told the Fife Free Press.

"I think they (Shippy) had trained on Thursday night but done nothing for the previous two or three weeks, so we knew they were going to be a wee bit rusty, although they went 1-0 up in the first 15 seconds!

“But after that we played really well. The boys’ fitness levels were good, we were pressing hard, they made a few mistakes and we capitalised on that.

"It's a total transformation from last year. We had games in hand last year and – if you were a betting man – you would have put your house on us getting promoted.

"But we never had the points in the bag. This year, we’ve got points in the bag and we’ve still got games in hand.

"We’ve only lost a couple of games, we drew a couple which we shouldn’t have, but we’re up there challenging and that’s where we should be.

"We shouldn’t be in this league, we should be in the first division but getting there is a very, very difficult task because there are teams round about you who can beat you, Bo’ness Athletic, Armadale, Stirling, Kennoway, Dalkeith who skelped us 6-0 in the first game of the season, they’re all decent sides. But you have to have that level of consistency all the way through the season to get promoted.

"I had drilled it into the boys every single week in the lead up to Christmas: ‘Don’t do too much, go out for a jog, do a 5k’ and they did.

"We had a friendly against Jeanfield Swifts from two leagues above us and we beat them 3-1 at Dalgety Bay. We played really well that day as well.

"Things are looking good, we’ve got a strong squad, we’ve got 18 to 20 players to pick from every single week. It’s a nightmare for us to pick teams if everybody turns up and does well.”

Ironically, Saturday’s 10-goal thriller came just nine weeks after Shippy and Hibs had drawn 0-0 in their previous league game at Recreation Park.

Gilbert added: “That was a wrong result, a dropped two points for us. We should have been four up in the first half of that game, although they had a couple of chances in the second half.”