John Collins is far too young. But he does look like he sent away for a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course as advertised in the best comics when I was a lad. It showed how to turn wimps into weightlifters.
That's one of the many reasons I'm surprised his first team players have tried to kick sand in his face. He has muscles in places I don't even have places.
 Collins has already brought success to Hibernian |
But what has emerged too is that he has the mental strength to match and in the days just past has been forced to chisel out a new maturity which rubbed the edges off his almost virginal managerial technique.
You need to learn fast in this game.
Player power doesn't always stink. It was clear, for example, that factions of the Rangers dressing room had a point when they figured that Paul Le Guen was in the wrong movie.
In the end they had the agreement of the French coach himself on that.
But, apart from the fact that Collins is another Franco fitness freak, there is little similarity about their situations.
The Easter Road players who used their manager's back as a dartboard for knives were always on the road to nowhere.
Even if they had a case, the timing - which is everything in revolutions - was anywhere between ill advised and downright ridiculous.
Right enough, who the hell do Hibs think they are? Hearts?
There is no doubt that Collins has a wee swagger in his stride. Always did. But when you have the back-up you are more entitled than we lesser mortals.
He embraced his first managerial appointment at the club, where he also served his apprenticeship as a player, with the enthusiasm of a father reuniting with a long lost son.
 | MY SPORT: DEBATE |
And it seemed that within a heartbeat he had won a national trophy. Everything in the garden was lovely - then someone dug up his lawn.
There is too much of this I cannot comprehend. But then again we have had to live on a drip-feed of the facts.
Even Inspector Clouseau could have worked out that the guilty men were wearing green and white jerseys and were masquerading as players.
And when their playing days are over they would be ill advised to seek employment as either trade union officials or mercenary revolutionaries.
Did they really have a problem with a man who has played in the finest leagues in Europe, in World Cups and European Championships?
Is it so terrible that a man who has coined a small fortune in return and would faint at the sight of a white pudding supper, with or without salt and sauce, is advising them about their diet?
He has won a trophy, flogged an unsettled player for �2m and evacuated a goalkeeper who had trouble keeping a beach ball out of a rabbit hole.
 Collins was backed by supporters at the Scottish Cup semi-final |
And still he stands on the threshold of something which hasn't been achieved since 1902.
When Hibs last won the cup they were elbowing the end of the Boer War out of the headlines.
Collins has handled himself with some dignity in all of this, aside that is, from the autocue performance of Tommy Craig in the press conference for the daily newspapers on Thursday.
That was ventriloquism at the amateur dramatic society.
But I'll tell you the scoreline: Collins 1 Dressing Room 0.
The statement issued by the club following another meeting was nothing more than a grovelling apology by the players.
And all they could do was blame someone for making the issue public. That, presumably, was one of their own.
That meeting must have been like a gathering of miscreant pupils in the headmaster's room.
In all of this I didn't speak to one Hibs fan who backed the players ahead of the management.
They suspected - as some of us knew - that he had the power of the throne - club owner Tom Farmer - behind him. It was never a contest.
In the end it was no more than a powder puff revolution.
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