Hampden Or Murrayfield?

I have to say that as soon as it was announced that the match would be kicking off at 12.15pm on a Sunday (for live TV), the unanimous choice would have to be Murrayfield, but it seems I couldn’t have been further off the mark. Hearts have written to the SFA asking them to consider switching the tie to Murrayfield, a move backed by pretty much their entire support, but according to reports Hibs fans are ‘split 50-50’ on it.

I must say I am struggling to believe this as any Hibs fans I’ve spoken to (sensible ones mind you, not the ‘if Hearts say black we’ll say white’ variety!) cannot see any reason why the match should have to take place in Glasgow if the SFA are open to moving it to Edinburgh. And why should they? Murrayfield is a far, far easier place to get to than Hampden for the vast majority of supporters of Hibs and Hearts (especially on a Sunday), it gives Edinburgh a huge footballing event to stage that will for once put the Old Firm in the shade (something we’ve been wanting for years), it can cater for 15,000 more people, it’s an all-round better stadium than Hampden and if policed properly, will provide much less scope for crowd trouble. In fact this latter point is probably the most important: it’s surely easier to police one stadium than an entire motorway as well as the stadium, which is what they’d need to do for Hampden. I can only imagine the potential carnage at various service stations along the M8 and probably on the road itself when the traffic’s at a standstill, which will be most of the time given the huge volume of buses and cars. Indeed we experienced this last year when playing at Hampden against Celtic and there was only a fraction of the number travelling from Edinburgh then compared to what there would be at this game.

So far the only reason given for Hibs opposing Murrayfield is that it would ‘give Hearts an advantage’, in reference to the fact that they played three UEFA cup ties at the home of Scottish rugby last season. This does seem a little bit petty, so I may as well join in with the pettiness: only five players are still in the Hearts first team from when those UEFA Cup ties were played. Of those five, four have played at Hampden for Scotland many times since then and the whole Hearts team have played a cup tie against Queens Park at Hampden this season, so by the same reckoning that means the match cannot be played at Hampden either, as we’d also have an unfair advantage there! It doesn’t really hold up as an argument against the pluses mentioned above in my opinion.

It gets worse though: Hibs have apparently agreed to play a replay at Murrayfield if the match at Hampden is drawn! I’m sorry but none of this makes ANY sense. It just goes to show that they don’t really believe Hearts have an advantage at all if they’re willing to play a replay there. They cite the reasons for agreeing to the replay in Edinburgh being down to the logistical difficulties of having fans going through to Glasgow in midweek, but exactly the same difficulties exist on a Sunday morning I’m afraid! Nonsense.

I can’t help thinking that all of this is a bit of ‘kidology’ from both camps and possibly the Press. It could be all agreed already but in the effort to ensure that the tie sells out no matter where it is staged, they want to publicly build up the hype as much as they can as they do in Boxing to generate more interest. I really hope that’s all it is, because if the tie does go to Hampden I think they’ll seriously struggle to sell it out and that would be downright embarrassing for both Edinburgh clubs.

The situation will be monitored with interest………..