It was the strangest kind of farewell; more sadness than satisfaction, more 'thanks for the memories' than 'never darken our door again'. After a dozen years as a player, a goalscoring and Scottish Cup-winning icon, a coach, an interim manager and, for the last two-and-a-bit seasons, the first team manager, David Gray exited Hibernian on Wednesday evening. He left, not to the sound of euphoria from the fans, but to the sound of a support collectively exhaling in relief.
Given what he did on an immortal day at Hampden in 2016, no Hibs supporter wanted to boo the man they called Sir David Gray, nobody wanted to call for his head. It was a painful endgame, for everybody. Hibs have sacked many managers in recent seasons, but this was no Nick Montgomery, no Lee Johnson, no Shaun Maloney.
Gray was altogether different. Driven, passionate, honest as the day is long, brutally so when talking about how things were going wrong, which he had been doing too much of lately. Gray's big picture tells us this: he was the first manager at Easter Road to qualify for European football in consecutive seasons since the great Eddie Turnbull in the early 1970s.
The kind of slump that Hibs are in right now is entirely in keeping with what's happened at Hibs over the last half century. He's the only Hibs manager to win at Ibrox in three consecutive seasons. He won at Celtic Park last season, too.
The flipside is also clear. Six successive home defeats in the league equals a grim club record dating back to 1920. Two shots at European Conference League play-offs - and the finance that would have come had they completed the task - were wasted in the most self-harming way.
Six points from six games, ninth in the table, an awful loss to lowly Kilmarnock on Tuesday and a sense of drift did for him. Making the League Cup semi-final, against Hearts, wasn't enough to save him. Gray sacked by Hibs after six league games The style of football wasn't easy on the eye, the lack of energy and entertainment was a problem that was only growing.
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