The residents of a rather smart part of Glasgow that is Mount Florida are soon to be spared of a building site slap bang in the middle of their douce villas. The workmen are due to complete the rebuilding of Hampden Park which in the next few weeks at the not inconsiderable cost of £45 million.
The place will be transformed from a poor house to a palace and will open its doors to paying customers on May 29th for the Tennents Scottish Cup Final. This weekend will decide which two clubs have the privilege of competing in a match which, not without reason, will be dubbed "historic".
The old romantics will fervently hope that the day is remembered as the time when the stadium was filled with hoards from Perth and Dundee, average age 15, and all intent on making every face-painter in the country a person of some substance. Colder instincts say that the ground will be full of people wearing blue and green while pursuing a very different agenda.
Any sound judgement suggests that Celtic will beat Dundee United today and Rangers will triumph over St Johnstone tomorrow to produce the first Old Firm final since 1989. The new Hampden Park would then be inaugurated with a game between the two giants who see their presence on such occasions as almost mandatory.
St Johnstone, quite suddenly, have the better chance of upsetting the odds. Until six days ago they looked to be in Rangers' pocket, having lost all four games and conceded 14 goals against them this season. Then at trim McDiarmid Park, they scored a 31 league victory that will have given them every confidence for the Cup.
Perth takes its pleasures quietly and seriously. Their manager, Sandy Clark, talked at some length a few days later in a room full of fading photographs of the late Willie Ormond, the manager who in the early 70s gave the Saints a brief flirtation with real success. Outside, dozens of kids played on the best all-weather surface in Scotland as part of the club's community programme over the Easter holidays.
"We never seem to get the credit," Clark said, echoing the private thoughts of many who think the rest of the Premier League exists only to give the Glasgow teams some strenuous match practice. "We won there the other night but all I seem to read in the papers is that Rangers are in crisis. The whole perspective seems to be of what the Old Firm is doing, good or bad. You could get bitter about it. Here we just have the occasional laugh," he says.
"Each time we have played Rangers this season we have got closer to them so the win didn't surprise me. In this semi-final, they will have a little bit more pressure on them than they have been used to. We'll just see how they respond to it."
Although Rangers know they have already acquired the League Cup by beating St Johnstone this season, a worrying lack of concentration shown at the heart of their defence will concern manager Dick Advocaat. He might also contemplate the thought that anyone who spends over £30 million fashioning a side really has no excuse if it cannot beat an admirable, if limited, team like the Saints.
Celtic's task looks easier but injuries will force them to play a makeshift defence against United. With their resources so stretched they might even play Morten Weighorst out of position for his first full game of the season after a lengthy injury battle. But with goals coming from every quarter in this prolific spring, they can afford to trade a few and worry only about finding directions to Hampden's new dressing rooms.
