March has not been the greatest of months for Hibernian - but John Rankin is looking for it to end with a vital victory at Easter Road this evening, and from there the side can battle through April and on to the end of the season with a renewed purpose. From listening to the midfielder talking ahead of the game yesterday it is clear that if determination alone was to be the deciding factor in who finishes third in the SPL then Hibernian will not be far away.

The win against Falkirk on Saturday confirmed Hibernian's top-six status - and the easy thing to do from there would be to relax a little. That might well have been the case for Hibernian at another time, this season however the management and entire squad have held a determination for months that the target had to be third place or better - results in recent weeks may have made that more difficult but the determination remains in place.

Looking ahead to the game this evening Rankin said: "The game against Dundee United is huge, they are two points in front of us just now and this game will take us back into line with everyone else in the league - and a win would also move us five points in front of Motherwell, and we still have them to play as well. We have home advantage and need to use that, we need to take three points form this game - but we had a good win at the weekend so morale is high and we are all looking forward to this game. We are back winning again and now the aim is to keep that going, get ourselves on another run of good results - if we can do that between now and the end of the season.

"We were a bit quiet last week after the Scottish Cup game but I think that was us building our own resolve, and by the time we went to Falkirk we were sure within ourselves that we were going to win the game. There was a determination in the side that we had to stop the bad run there and then, I think everyone then saw the determination - it was not pretty at times but if we need to do that until the end of the season then we will."

Hibernian will face a side that is currently bang on form, on a particular high after putting Rangers out of the Scottish Cup and then managing a 3-0 win over Motherwell at the weekend in spite of their being reduced to ten men early in the game. That however merely makes Rankin all the more determined to help make the Hibernian cause a winning one both this evening and on into the remainder of the season: "Dundee United are the form team right now but we've been there ourselves this season, we've been the 'form' team - it is nice to be there but at the end of the day everyone else tries that little bit harder to beat you just because you are doing well at that point of the season.

"When you are up there you are up there to be shot at - but United have had a good season, they had a change of manager and had a little dip in form around then but we've just had our dip as well. Hopefully we have come out of that and can put a run together again, we are desperate to do that."

Rankin admits that Hibernian have set themselves up a bit - but he would rather be in that position than just settle for a 'safe' top six place: "It's getting to the serious part of the season now and it's great to be in there and challenging for third, it is a good feeling not to be going into the last games thinking OK, we're safe - we're not really challenging for anything. But we are going for that European spot, we are determined that we are going to finish the season at least in third place and if we don't for us it means failure because that has been our target this season.

"We might be setting ourselves up a bit by saying that, we are there to be shot at and fail - but it is a great feeling to be going for it, we are not afraid of failure, we are going for it - we'll give it our all and hopefully we will achieve our aim."