The last time these two sides met in a League Cup semi-final back in January 2007 St Johnstone were the lower league club, and Hibs the Premier League one.
And it was a case of what might have been for the Perth men.
The competition was known as the CIS Insurance Cup in those days, and John Collins’ Hibs team had several future Scotland stars in their line-up.
Scott Brown, Steven Whittaker and Steven Fletcher all started at Tynecastle, with the latter putting the heavy favourites ahead early on.
But Saints, who had now Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes in their team, fought back strongly and deservedly equalised with 15 minutes to go through Jason Scotland.
Owen Coyle’s men had chances to win the contest before it went into extra-time, with towering centre-back Kevin James causing havoc at set-pieces.
The telling moment proved to be Perth keeper Kevin Cuthbert’s failure to hold a 30-yard David Murphy free-kick that sneaked into the bottom corner, and Abdessalam Benjelloun settled the game in the dying seconds on a Hibs counter-attack.
“That didn’t do much for my grey hairs,” admitted Collins, whose team went on to beat Kilmarnock 5-1 in the final. “We know we can play a lot better than we did tonight. The first goal should have settled us down but for some reason we became very anxious, although St Johnstone are due enormous credit.”
Coyle said: “I don’t think anyone could have envisaged the periods of dominance we had against a good Hibs side. But it just wasn’t to be.”
Perth fans will be hoping that nine years later the top flight team will carry the luck again.
The Saints team that night was – Cuthbert, Lawrie, McManus, James, Stanic, Mensing, McInnes, Hardie, (Jackson), Sheerin, Scotland, MacDonald (Morais).
Hibs lined up – McNeil, Whittaker, Jones, Martis, Murphy, Sproule (McCann), Brown, Beuzelin, Stewart (Benjelloun), Shiels (Stevenson), Fletcher.