Meetings between Motherwell and Hibernian at Fir Park are seldom dull affairs, whether it is due to fireworks on the pitch or a floodlights fire.
When the Lanarkshire club hosted their maiden evening of Friday night football last season, the match was abandoned at half-time due to an electrical fire in the South Stand, where the Hibernian fans were housed.
They were in jovial mood due to the fact that their side were leading 1-0. However, they would not get the opportunity to see the result through, and ultimately embarked on a run of five matches without a win.
They lost the rearranged fixture 4-3 in what manager Pat Fenlon concedes was a "fantastic" spectacle.
There is also the small matter of the highest-scoring match in the history of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, as Lukas Jutkiewicz netted a late equaliser for the Fir Park men in May 2010.
Fenlon concedes he would be content with a rather more mundane match tonight, but is not immune to the draw of that sort of drama.
"I wouldn't say I have fond memories of Fir Park," he said with a smile. "It was a good night, but it quickly turned into a difficult night.
"We couldn't do anything about it. It's something that doesn't happen too often as a manager, but happened in my first game in the dugout for Hibs. I don't look back and think 'if we'd won that game we might have done better after that'. I just tried to take the positives out of it, like we do with every match.
"In the return, we were on the wrong side of that 4-3 result. I recall watching the 6-6 match, I remember a fantastic goal to equalise late on. When you're watching a game like that as a neutral you think it's fantastic but if you try to put yourself in the shoes of a manager then you wonder how you'd deal with a game like that."
Tim Clancy, the Hibernian defender, admits the prospect of facing his former club tonight has given his bid to regain fitness an extra boost.
A stomach muscle problem precluded him from facing Ross County in the 3-2 defeat in Dingwall last weekend but Clancy is hopeful a specially tailored training regime will convince his manager he is ready to return against Stuart McCall's side.
He said: "I missed last week's game with a bit of a strain in my stomach. There are just a few muscles which are strained – it's just a bit of wear and tear but, hopefully, I'll be back in contention to play on Friday.
"The Motherwell match will be extra special for me – I've always said that the year I spent there was the most enjoyable of my career so far. So that gives me extra motivation to try to get back in the side and, hopefully, help Hibs get back to winning ways."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article